Learner profile management for collaborating adaptive eLearning applications

Adaptive Learning Systems would perform better if they would be able to exchange as many relevant fragments of information about the learner as possible. The use of Web Services standards is recently gaining the attention of many researches as a promising solution for the problem of interfacing adaptive hypermedia systems. Existing Web Service standards, however, only provide very basic features and leave out many important issues like transactional management. In this paper we propose a mechanism for enabling consistency maintenance of Learner Profiles shared between collaborating adaptive learning systems

Design and Simulation of a Renewable Energy-Based Smart Grid for Ma'an City, Jordan: A Feasibility Study

Received: 14 September 2023. Revised: 10 November 2023. Accepted: 12 December 2023. Available online: 29 December 2023.The escalating costs, transmission losses, and environmental ramifications associated with fossil fuel utilization have catalyzed a paradigm shift towards Renewable Energy Sources (RES) in electricity generation. Smart Grid (SG) technologies, which are inherently reliant on a RES-exclusive electricity framework, facilitate efficient energy consumption and the distribution of decentralized energy resources. This investigation underscores the integration of RES within SG infrastructure and the potential for Jordan's transition towards an SG-enabled future. Situated in a locale characterized by abundant solar irradiance and significant wind velocities, Ma'an city presents an optimal case study for RES deployment. An amalgamated RES system, comprising wind and photovoltaic (PV) modules with an aggregate capacity of 180MW, has been meticulously sized and designed to cater to the electrical demand of Ma'an. The load requirements for Ma'an were determined through an analysis of the city's average annual energy consumption, adjusted for population growth projections. To bolster the system's reliability and cater to emergency load demands, a storage solution has been integrated. The performance of the proposed design was substantiated and assessed via mathematical modeling and simulation analysis, utilizing the MATLAB Simulink platform. The simulations were conducted accounting for factors impinging upon each system's production capacity, inclusive of transmission line losses. Moreover, a Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller was incorporated and evaluated under simulated fault conditions, ensuring system disconnection within a five-second window subsequent to fault detection. The simulation outcomes exhibited congruence with the mathematical model predictions. Economically, the installation of the proposed systems is justifiable, with projected savings of approximately 80 million Jordanian Dinars (JD) annually and a favorable payback period of 14 months. The levelized cost of electricity is competitively priced at 14.41 JD/MWh. The findings advocate for the expansion of RES integration across Jordan, suggesting the feasibility of a nationwide RES-based SG implementation.This work is supported by Zarqa’a University and is fully funded by this institution

Answering confucius: The reason why we complicate

Learning is a level-progressing process. In any field of study, one must master basic concepts to understand more complex ones. Thus, it is important that during the learning process learners are presented and challenged with knowledge which they are able to comprehend (not a level below, not a level too high). In this work we focus on language learners. By gradually improving (complicating) texts, readers are challenged to learn new vocabulary. To achieve such goals, in this paper we propose and evaluate the 'complicator' that translates given sentences to a chosen level of higher degree of difficulty. The 'complicator' is based on natural language processing and information retrieval approaches that perform lexical replacements. 30 native English speakers participated in a user study evaluating our methods on an expert-tailored dataset of children books. Results show that our tool can be of great utility for language learners who are willing to improve their vocabulary. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40814-4_45.TERENCEEC/FP

The Learners' User Classes in the TERENCE Adaptive Learning System

Nowadays, circa 10% of 7-11 olds turn out to be poor comprehenders: they demonstrate text comprehension difficulties, related to inference making, despite proficiency in low-level cognitive skills like word reading. To improve the reading comprehension of these children, TERENCE, a technology enhanced learning project, aims at stimulating inference-making about stories. In order to design and develop the TERENCE system, we use a user centred design approach that requires an in depth study of the system's main end-users, namely, its learners and educators. This paper reports on the specification of the user classes for the TERENCE learners by means of user-centred design field studies, the resulting global system architecture, and an example use case of the system, with few related GUI's snapshots.European Commision (EC). Funding FP7/SP1/ICT. Project Code: 25741

Combining Global Optimization with Local Selection for Efficient QoS-aware Service Composition

ABSTRACT The run-time binding of web services has been recently put forward in order to support rapid and dynamic web service compositions. With the growing number of alternative web services that provide the same functionality but differ in quality parameters, the service composition becomes a decision problem on which component services should be selected such that user's end-to-end QoS requirements (e.g. availability, response time) and preferences (e.g. price) are satisfied. Although very efficient, local selection strategy fails short in handling global QoS requirements. Solutions based on global optimization, on the other hand, can handle global constraints, but their poor performance renders them inappropriate for applications with dynamic and realtime requirements. In this paper we address this problem and propose a solution that combines global optimization with local selection techniques to benefit from the advantages of both worlds. The proposed solution consists of two steps: first, we use mixed integer programming (MIP) to find the optimal decomposition of global QoS constraints into local constraints. Second, we use distributed local selection to find the best web services that satisfy these local constraints. The results of experimental evaluation indicate that our approach significantly outperforms existing solutions in terms of computation time while achieving close-tooptimal results

دراسة تحليلية لأثر بعض المتغيرات الاقتصادية والديموغرافية في معدل البطالة في سورية خلال الفترة 2011-2018

تهدف الدراسة  إلى معرفة أثر بعض المتغيِّرات الاقتصادية والديموغرافية ،ومنها (معدَّل النُّمو السكاني، معدَّل النُّمو الاقتصادي، معدَّل نمو الاستثمار) ، في معدَّل البطالة خلال الفترة 2011-2018. وتمَّ إتباع المنهج الوصفي التحليلي لإعطاء صُورة واضحة عن البطالة، عبر تحليل البيانات الصَّادرة عن المكتب المركزي للإحصاء، كما تمَّ استخدام منهج التحليل الإحصائي لمعرفة أثر المتغيِّرات الاقتصادية والديموغرافية في معدَّل البطالة، ومعرفة علاقة الارتباط بين هذه المتغيِّرات ومعدَّل البطالة.. وقد تمثلت مشكلة الدراسة في الإجابة على التساؤل التالي: ماهو أثر المتغيِّرات الاقتصادية والديموغرافية في معدَّل البطالة خلال الفترة  2011-2018؟ وينبثق عن هذا السؤال الرئيس مجموعة من الأسئلة الفرعية، وهي: - ماهي العلاقة بين معدلات البطالة والمتغيرات الاقتصادية والديموغرافية ؟ - ماهي الرؤية المقترحة الَّتي يمكن أنْ تسهم في الحدِّ من معدَّلات البطالة في سورية ؟ وكانت من أهم النتائج التي توصلت إليها الدراسة: -لا يوجد علاقة معنوية ذات دلالة إحصائية، بين معدَّل النُّمو السكاني ومعدَّل البطالة خلال فترة الدراسة 2011-2018 - لا يوجد علاقة معنوية ذات دلالة إحصائية، بين معدَّل النُّمو الاقتصادي ومعدَّل البطالة خلال فترة الدراسة 2011-2018 -لا يوجد علاقة معنوية ذات دلالة إحصائية، بين معدَّل نمو الاستثمارات ومعدَّل البطالة خلال فترة الدراسة 2011-2018 -كل النتائج التي توصلنا إليها في متن البحث كانت غير ممثلة لحقيقة طبيعة العلاقة بين متغيرات الدراسة وذلك بسبب تذبذب المعدلات المدروسة نتيجة الاضطرابات والظروف الاستثنائية غير العادية التي مرت بها سورية خلال فترة الأزمة