Sports in Pre-Modern and Early Modern Siam: Aggressive and Civilised Masculinities

This thesis is a contribution to two bodies of scholarship: first, the historical understanding of the modernisation process in Siam; second, one of the central bodies of scholarship used to analyse sport sociologically – Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning’s study. Previous studies of the emergence of a more civilised form of manner in modern Siam highlight the imitation of Western civilised conducts, overlooking the continued role of violence in this change in Siamese behaviour from the pre-modern to modern periods. According to evidence, from around the 1900s, Siamese elites engaged in deliberate projects to civilise prevalent non-elites’ aggressive conducts. This, in turn, has implications for the Eliasian understanding of sports and civilising process, which emphasises their unplanned development in Europe, at the expense of grasping the deliberate interventions of the Siamese elites. To fill this gap, I apply the concept of the “civilising offensive” to underline the planned process of civilisation. The thesis discusses how aggressive masculinity was expressed legitimately during the pre-modern age, and how this violent behaviour was transformed by the elites’ promotions of civilising plans and sports under contexts of colonisation and nation-state building processes. I examine how civilised self-images were produced from interactions between Siamese elites, non-elites and Westerners. I use autobiographies, government documents, newspapers, match reports, chronicles, poems, travel writings and so on to explore first-hand accounts of behaviours, identities and values related to the presence of violence in sports and politics. From the 1820s onward, Westerners used what they perceived to be their higher civilisation standards as an excuse to interfere in Asia. In response to the Westerners’ perceptions of the Siamese as barbarous, Siamese elites promoted civilised identities through sports and education. In the 1900s, to avoid being shamed, the non-elites learned to act in a civilised manner temporarily when interacting with elites and Westerners in sports fields. The civilising effect of interdependence between these actors showed that planned and unplanned processes of civilisation coexisted in Siam

Study on advanced information processing system

Issues related to the reliability of a redundant system with large main memory are addressed. In particular, the Fault-Tolerant Processor (FTP) for Advanced Launch System (ALS) is used as a basis for our presentation. When the system is free of latent faults, the probability of system crash due to nearly-coincident channel faults is shown to be insignificant even when the outputs of computing channels are infrequently voted on. In particular, using channel error maskers (CEMs) is shown to improve reliability more effectively than increasing the number of channels for applications with long mission times. Even without using a voter, most memory errors can be immediately corrected by CEMs implemented with conventional coding techniques. In addition to their ability to enhance system reliability, CEMs--with a low hardware overhead--can be used to reduce not only the need of memory realignment, but also the time required to realign channel memories in case, albeit rare, such a need arises. Using CEMs, we have developed two schemes, called Scheme 1 and Scheme 2, to solve the memory realignment problem. In both schemes, most errors are corrected by CEMs, and the remaining errors are masked by a voter

Study on fault-tolerant processors for advanced launch system

Issues related to the reliability of a redundant system with large main memory are addressed. The Fault-Tolerant Processor (FTP) for the Advanced Launch System (ALS) is used as a basis for the presentation. When the system is free of latent faults, the probability of system crash due to multiple channel faults is shown to be insignificant even when voting on the outputs of computing channels is infrequent. Using channel error maskers (CEMs) is shown to improve reliability more effectively than increasing redundancy or the number of channels for applications with long mission times. Even without using a voter, most memory errors can be immediately corrected by those CEMs implemented with conventional coding techniques. In addition to their ability to enhance system reliability, CEMs (with a very low hardware overhead) can be used to dramatically reduce not only the need of memory realignment, but also the time required to realign channel memories in case, albeit rare, such a need arises. Using CEMs, two different schemes were developed to solve the memory realignment problem. In both schemes, most errors are corrected by CEMs, and the remaining errors are masked by a voter

A Guideline for Environmental Games (GEG) and a randomized controlled evaluation of a game to increase environmental knowledge related to human population growth

People often have very little knowledge about the impact of unsustainable human population growth on the environment and social well-being especially in developing countries. Therefore, an efficient method should be explored in order to educate, and if possible, to convince the members of the public to realize the environmental and social problems caused by the unsustainable population growth. Digital Game-Based Learning (DGBL) has been highlighted by some studies as an innovative tool for learning enhancement. While only a handful of studies have scientifically evaluated the impact of DGBL on knowledge outcomes, the approach is an attractive tool to increase knowledge and motivate engagement with environmental issues surrounding population growth because of its potential to improve learners’ motivation and engagement thereby compared to traditional learning approaches. Therefore, the three primary research questions for this study are: 1) "Can a single-player digital game be an appropriate and attractive learning application for the players to gain insight about the relationship between the growing human population and the environmental issues?" 2) "How can we design environmental games for the players to gain insights about the relationship between the growing human population and the environmental issues via playing a game?" and 3) "What are the obstacles preventing the players from adapting environmental knowledge obtained from the learning mediums into the real-life?" To inform the development of an efficacious DGBL game to impact learning outcomes, critical reviews of environmental issues related to population growth as well as critical reviews of commercial and serious environmental games in terms of their educational and motivational values were undertaken in this study. The results of these critical reviews informed the development of a Guideline for Environmental Games (or GEG). The GEG was developed by combining the engaging game technology with environmental learning and persuasion theories. The GEG was then used to inform the development of a prototype game called THE GROWTH; a single-player, quiz-based, city-management game targeting young adolescents and adults. Multiple evaluation methods of the game were used to answer the three key research questions mentioned earlier. These methods included: 1) The Randomized Controlled Trial approach (RCT) where the participants were systematically divided into the experimental and the control group respectively and their knowledge scores (quantitative data) compared and analyzed, 2) The participants’ abilities to recall and describe the environmental and well-being issues were collected and analyzed qualitatively using The Content Analysis method (CA) and, 3) The participants’ overall feedback on the learning mediums was collected and analyzed to evaluate the motivational values of THE GROWTH itself. To this end, THE GROWTH was evaluated with 82 Thai-nationality participants (70 males and 12 females). The results showed that participants assigned to play THE GROWTH demonstrated greater environmental and social-well-being knowledge related to population growth (F(1,40) = 43.86, p = .006) compared to the control group participants assigned to a non-interactive reading activity (consistent with material presented in THE GROWTH). Furthermore, participants who played THE GROWTH recalled on average more content presented in the game when compared to participants who were presented with similar content in the reading material (t (59) = 3.35, p = .001). In terms of level of engagement, the study suggested that participants assigned to the game were more engaging with their learning medium on average when compared to participants assigned to the non-interactive reading activity. This is evidenced by the longer time participants spent on the task, the activity observed from participants’ recorded gameplay, and their positive responses in the survey. The semi-structured interviews used in this study highlighted the participants’ attitudes towards the environmental, social, and technological issues. Although the participants’ perceived behavioural intention towards the environmental commitments were not statistically differed between the two study group, their responses still provide some evidences that leaps may occur from the learning mediums to the real-world context. Furthermore, these responses can be valuable evidences for the policy makers and for the future development of environmental serious games. Overall, the results suggested that digital environmental games such as THE GROWTH might be an effective and motivational tool in promote the learning about sustainable population size, the environment, and the social well-being. The game’s ability to convince the participants to change towards sustainable lifestyles, however, might be subjected to the future research and other real-world circumstances such as the governmental and public supports. In summary, the research in this thesis makes the following contributions to knowledge: • The Guideline for Environmental Games (GEG) contributes to knowledge about making theoretically-based environmental games. It has particular significance because the guideline was validated by demonstrating learning improvements in a systematic randomized controlled trial. • The use of Multi-Strategy Study Design where multiple systematic evaluation methods were used in conjunction to provide conclusive findings about the efficacy of DGBL to impact outcomes. • THE GROWTH itself is a contribution to applied research as an example of an effective DGBL learning tool

The system design and evaluation of a microprocessor controlled dispenser using a radar ground-speed sensor

This experimental research focused on the design of a new approach to control seed dispensers and to analyze the performance characteristics of a Doppler radar ground speed sensor for a microprocessor control dispenser. The research focused on comparing the effectiveness of using a radar unit with a fifth-wheel encoder for measuring ground speed when both were connected to a microprocessor controlled seed dispenser. The system designed for this study consisted of hardware and a computer program in 6502 assembly language. The hardware for this study consisted of a monitor device, microprocessor control unit, stepper motor, fifth-wheel encoder, Doppler radar and the device for the planting of seeds. the software was designed by the researcher during an internship at Rawson Control Systems Corporation. Laboratory tests and field tests were used in the study to test the Doppler radar and microprocessor control unit. Laboratory tests were conducted to determine the accuracy of the microprocessor based speedometer, seed spacing control and the output waveforms from the Doppler radar and the fifth-wheel encoder under controlled conditions. The laboratory provided an environment for controlling the variables of this research. Field tests were conducted to test the accuracy and variability of the seed spacing control under actual conditions. The resultanat data were analyzed using the t test, F test and one-way ANOVA. The most important findings were: 1. There was a significant difference between the mean indicated ground speeds of the Doppler radar and the fifth-wheel encoder controlled dispensing devices (calculated by the microcomputer in M. P. H.) when an input signal was varied from 1 Hz to 574 Hz to the control box. The Doppler radar was more sensitive to frequency changes than the fifth-wheel encoder. 2. Under the laboratory tests, without considering the slippage of the wheel, there was no significant difference between using the fifth-wheel encoder and the Doppler radar as sensors in dispensing seed at a uniform spacing. 3. In the field tests, a significant difference was found between using the Doppler radar sensor and a fifth-wheel encoder with regard to dispensed seeds at a uniform spacing, due to possible wheel slippage. The Doppler radar controlled unit dispensed seeds at a more uniform spacing than the fifth-wheel encoder control unit. 4. There was a significant difference between using the the Doppler radar sensor and a fifth-wheel encoder with regard to variability of output sigals from the sensors. The Doppler radar provided a less variable output signal than the fifth-wheel encoder. 5. During the field test, the researcher observed that one problem of using the Doppler radar unit was the slight vibration of the Doppler radar caused by the engine of the tractor. This caused some erroneous input signals to the microprocessor control unit because the monitor displayed a fractional part of a ground speed (MPH) while the tractor was stationary. The results obtained from the data analyses show that using the Doppler radar unit as a sensor in the field tests will provide a more uniform spacing control. In general, the Doppler radar controlled unit was considered to be more accurate than the fifth-wheel encoder control unit

Web Based Postgraduate Thesis/Dessertation System - A Prototype

With the advancement of information communication technology in Malaysia, education field should take advantage to upgrade their learning and management techniques. Students should be allowed to learn anytime, anywhere and at their own place. However administration and lecture should be able to manage their work more effective and flexible. The web-based system is effective way to learning and managing education works. This report outlines the development of a web-based postgraduate thesis/dissertation management system (WPTS), which aimed to assist thesis/dissertation administration, supervisor and students in the better integration during students doing the thesis/dissertation works. This prototype system base on case study with a group of MSC(IT), administration, lecturer and students who participate in thesis/dissertation management activities. This report also presenting the tests conducted with users, it also contributed some perspective regarding benefits that gain by administration, supervisor and students, and recommends future application of the approach