INTEGRATED ECOLOGICAL PLANNING IN SINGAPORE: NEOTIEWPIA ECO-VILLAGE IN BUSTLING METROPOLITAN

ABSTRACT :The Neotiewpia Eco-Village is located within the Lim Chu Kang district at the north of Singapore. The Eco-Village only comprised of 3.5 sq km. Meanwhile the area was dominated by farms, chalets and Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve. In 2006, National University of Singapore, School of Design and Environment (SDE), MSc. Environmental Management and Nature Society of Singapore initiated an ecological planning exercise within the Neotiewpia site to reduce the environmental impact from the development while providing Eco-friendly Tourism and R&D activities that feasible in the site. We did participate in the exercise and we tried explaining the ecological process, the limitation and potential development for integrated ecological planning framework in Developing Countries like Indonesia, Brazil, etc with high ecological-values ecosystems. The Vision of Neotiewpia was “A Model Eco-Village that Respects its Natural Heritage, Builds Strong Community Links and Promotes Economic Development on Nature’s Premises." And Neotiewpia was successfully planned and designed with integrated ecological planning approach. It embraced the land evaluation and impact assessment. Further the plan was found feasible by the Singapore Government by earmarking the Lim Chu Kang and Kranji for Agri-tainment development in 2008 (although partially implemented). The Neotiewpia or Lim Chu Kang area was found thriving with Green-Economy and Agro-Tourism. This integrated ecological planning could be translated to other areas in Developing Countries with agriculture potential and facing development pressures such as Neotiewpia. This concept would give alternate Green-Solution to the current economic crisis

Efficient FPGA implementation of high-throughput mixed radix multipath delay commutator FFT processor for MIMO-OFDM

This article presents and evaluates pipelined architecture designs for an improved high-frequency Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) processor implemented on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) for Multiple Input Multiple Output Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM). The architecture presented is a Mixed-Radix Multipath Delay Commutator. The presented parallel architecture utilizes fewer hardware resources compared to Radix-2 architecture, while maintaining simple control and butterfly structures inherent to Radix-2 implementations. The high-frequency design presented allows enhancing system throughput without requiring additional parallel data paths common in other current approaches, the presented design can process two and four independent data streams in parallel and is suitable for scaling to any power of two FFT size N. FPGA implementation of the architecture demonstrated significant resource efficiency and high-throughput in comparison to relevant current approaches within literature. The proposed architecture designs were realized with Xilinx System Generator (XSG) and evaluated on both Virtex-5 and Virtex-7 FPGA devices. Post place and route results demonstrated maximum frequency values over 400 MHz and 470 MHz for Virtex-5 and Virtex-7 FPGA devices respectively

A Reconfigurable FFT Architecture for Variable Length and Multi-Streaming WiMax Wireless OFDM Standards

This paper presents a reconfigurable FFT architecture for variable length andmultistreaming WiMax wireless standard. The architecture processes 1 streamof 2048-pt FFT, up to 2 streams of 1024-pt FFT or up to 4 streams of 512-ptFFT. The architecture consists of 11 SDF pipelined stages and radix-2 butterflyis calculated in each stage. The sampling frequency of the system is varied inaccordance with FFT length. The wordlength and buffer length in each stage isconfigurable depending on the FFT length. Latch-free clock gating technique isused to reduce power consumption.The architecture is synthesized for Virtex-6 XCVLX760 FPGA. Experimentalresults show that the architecture achieves the throughput as required by theWiMax standard and the design has additional features compared to the previousapproaches. The design used 1% of the total available FPGA resources andmaximum clock frequency of 313.67 MHz was achieved

How Subjective Clustering aids Affinity Diagram in grouping Customer needs inconsumer products

Insamling och analys av kundernas behov är viktiga delar i produktutvecklings- och innovationsprocesser. Dessa kundbehov måste vara i en form som lätt kan kommuniceras och förstås  särskilt avproduktutvecklare i ett företag. Affinity Diagram är ett vanligt använt verktyg för att strukturera kundbehov. På grund av att metoden bygger på gruppdiskussioner, finns det risk för att enskilda individers åsikter inte tas tillvara. En metod som tar hänsyn till de individuella bedömningarna är Subjective clustering, vilkenhar utvecklats för att stödja Affinity Diagram.   Tidigare forskare har tillämpat båda dessa metoder i ett vetenskapligt och industriellt sammanhang och har funnit att det finns 92,5% av koppling mellan Affinity Diagram och Subjective clustering och drog slutsatsen att Subjective clustering stödjer Affinity Diagram. Det saknas forskning om huruvida Subjective clustering stödjer Affinity Diagram för  konsumentprodukter. För att undersöka detta har en fallstudie på konsumentprodukter i ett produktutvecklingsprojekt i Creaffective GmbH genomförts.   Studien har undersökt hur kundbehov stuktureras både från produktutvecklarensoch från kundens perspektiv. Affinity Diagram och Subjective clustering utfördes i var och en av grupperna och jämfördes. Det konstaterades att det fanns 70% av association mellan Affinity Diagram och Subjective clustering i produktutvecklingsgruppenoch 58% av association mellan Affinity Diagram och Subjective clustering med kunderna som fokusgrupp. Från analysen framgår att Affinity Diagram ensam utgör är  lämplig metod för att strukturera kundernas behov för konsumentprodukter. Bakomliggande skäl till detta diskuteras i rapporten samt förslag på fortsatta studier.Collection and analysis of customer needs are important parts of product development and innovation processes. These customer needs must be in a form that can be easily communicated and easily understood especially by the R&D personnel. Affinity Diagram is one such tool to structure these data. Because of the nature of the Affinity diagram method, it is prone to biases. An alternative method that exists is Subjective clustering. It has been developed as an aid to support affinity diagram. Previous researcher has applied both these methods in a scientific and industrial context and has found that there is 92.5% of association between affinity diagram and subjective clustering and concluded that Subjective clustering aids affinity diagram. However there has been no research on whether subjective clustering aids affinity diagram in consumer products context. Taking this as a research gap, this thesis is performed, taking the Innovation project at Creaffective GmbH, as a case study. The research is conducted from both Product Development Team’s and Customer’s perspective. Affinity Diagram and Subjective clustering were separately performed with each of the group and then compared. It was found that there was 70% of association between Affinity Diagram and Subjective clustering by Product Development Team and 58% of association between Affinity Diagram and Subjective clustering by customers. It was concluded from the analysis that Affinity Diagram is the only suitable method to structure the customer needs for consumer products. Underlying reasons to the result is discussed in the thesis and further studied suggested

A Reconfigurable FFT Architecture for Variable-Length and Multi-Streaming OFDM Standards

This paper presents a reconfigurable FFT architecture for variable-length and multi-streaming WiMax wireless standard. The architecture processes 1 stream of 2048-point FFT, up to 2 streams of 1024-point FFT or up to 4 streams of 512-point FFT. The architecture consists of a modified radix-2 single delay feedback (SDF) FFT. The sampling frequency of the system is varied in accordance with the FFT length. The latch-free clock gating technique is used to reduce power consumption. The proposed architecture has been synthesized for the Virtex-6 XCVLX760 FPGA. Experimental results show that the architecture achieves the throughput that is required by the WiMax standard and the design has additional features compared to the previous approaches. The design uses 1% of the total available FPGA resources and maximum clock frequency of 313.67 MHz is achieved. Furthermore, this architecture can be expanded to suit other wireless standards

Penile Neurofibroma

Neurofibromatosis is a comparatively common hereditary disease which may present with generalized cutaneous neurofibromas. However, penile neurofibromata are rarely reported. Herein, we present a 43 year old male patient with histopathology proved penile neurofibromata in addition to other lesions

Keratoacanthoma-An Unusual Presentation

A 60 year old male presented with complaints of raised skin lesions over the suprapubic area which spontaneously fell off, only to recur. On examination, there were multiple verrucous, homy papules over suprapubic area. Dowling sign was positive and a clinical diagnosis of verruca vulgaris was made. But a biopsy from the lesion showed features of keratoacanthoma. Patient also had firm, discrete papules with crateriform depressions along the medical margin of palms, which can be grouped under marginal keratodermas

Lymphocytic Infiltration Of Jessner-An Unusual Presentation

A 45 year old male presented with an erythematous plaque involving the entire face and extending on to the front of neck of 23 years duration, without any history of remission of exacerbation. A skin biopsy revealed collection of lymphocytes in the dermis without follicle formation, around the blood vessels and appendages, consistent with histopathology of jessnerâ€s lymphocytic infiltration. Patient responded dramatically to chloroquine with flattening of the lesion within 2 months

Pemphigus Foliaceus In Pregnancy

A 35 year old female developed pemphigus foliaceus for the first time during her second pregnancy. Ultrasonogram done at the hospital had revealed a single live fetus of 28 weeks. But the pregnancy terminated in premature labour and still birth. Baby apparently did not have any skin lesion but was not available for examination or investigation