BAJA SAE: Building an Engineer

of the necessary experience needed to perform the job with a high level of competence. Simulating this real-world experience in a classroom or lab becomes difficult when it has to be squeezed into a class like senior design. While for some, a good grade might be incentive enough to put forth the effort to properly gain these experiences, other things will likely become a larger priority. The SAE student design series introduces students to a competitive atmosphere that promotes extreme learning growth in a short period of time. Each portion of the competition has a specific aim that, when combined together, train a student into an engineer who is far more experienced and educated than one born from a traditional classroom. The opportunities that come from this competition, presented both to learn and grow more familiar with the real world environment of engineering are invaluable. It submerges students into an environment that encourages and promotes growth in every dimension.Cockrell School of Engineerin

Practicum of Systems Integration in Engineering Education

This project asked engineering students to develop a multi-subsystem design that would produce electricity. Students over the duration of this project learned how to simulate and design systems theoretically using computer tools. Furthermore, students were expected to produce a prototype of their model, thereby self-analyzing the practicality levels and enhancing learning. With the technology available to students advancing, systems integration techniques become more efficient learning experiences to the students. The benefits of systems integration can also be expanded to the professional world these students will soon step into. Therefore, teaching these techniques now will give students a better further insight on real world experience in a classroom setting. When students make the expected leap into the job market, it is important for them to have a solid understanding of system integration and multi-system design. It is this understanding that will make students more desirable to top end employers and set them apart form their peers.Cockrell School of Engineerin

The clinical effectiveness of simulation based airway management education using the Korean emergency airway registry

Introduction. Simulation training with an integrated simulator is appropriate for achieving educational goals in airway management. Thus, we designed this study to evaluate the effectiveness of a simulation based emergency airway management program (SBEAMP) in actual practice. Method. This is a retrospective sub-group analysis of the Korean Emergency Airway Management Registry from 2006 to 2010. We categorized all hospitals into two groups. Six hospitals that actively attended SBEAMP were defined as the ‘participant group’, and the others as the ‘non-participant group’. The types of medicines administered, the use of pre-oxygenation, and the rate of first pass success were compared. Result. The ratio of patients with no medicine received during intubation showed a decrease in both groups but was more rapid in the participant group (p<0.001). The ratio of intubation with sedatives alone was high in the non-participant group (P<0.001). The ratio of intubation with paralytics alone was high in the non-participant group (p<0.001). In the participant group, a combination of both agents was used more frequently (P<0.001). Cases of intubation with both agents and preoxygenation were more prevalent in the participant group (P<0.001). Conclusion. We concluded in this study that SBEAMP had a positive influence on actual clinical outcomes in emergency airway management

The use of media technology in foreign language teaching and learning at university level :a study of teachers' attitudes in Korea

PhD ThesisDespite the potential and increased availability of media technology, including advanced technologies such as computers and CD-ROM multimedia, teachers' actual use of technology, and particularly of the advanced technologies, in FLT/L in higher education in Korea still tends to be limited. The purposes of this study were, therefore: 1) to investigate the current patterns and contexts of teachers' (and for reference, students') use of media technology and their attitudes towards its use in FLT/L at university level in Korea; 2) to examine the cause of problems and the possibilities of improvement in its use in FLT/L; and 3) based on these findings, to suggest some solutions and strategies for applying them to the Korean context. Quantitative and qualitative research methods were adopted, i.e., questionnaires, interviews, and classroom observations were used to collect the data required for this study. The subjects consisted of forty-eight teachers who teach English (and 535 students) at twelve universities in the central districts in Korea. In addition, workshopbased experiments were carried out to gather additional data on teachers' opinions and to evaluate the implications of the study. This study shows that the majority of Korean teachers (and students) have positive attitudes towards the use of media technology in FLT/L, with generally no significant gender and years of teaching experience (and academic years) differences, although they make little use of it. The study suggests that the availability of media technology equipment and appropriate materials in particular, teachers' knowledge of it, and proper teacher training have a positive impact on teachers' attitudes towards its use, and are, in addition to their positive attitudes, the other main factors influencing its successful implementation in FLT/L. It is concluded that to provide the teachers with sufficient knowledge of the capabilities of media technology and to encourage wider use, more access to hardware and software is necessary, and training to familiarise teachers with the hardware and software and its potential for language teaching is essential. Therefore, suggestions are made for the effective use of existing facilities, and for a model that could be adopted for teacher training courses.Mrs. Barbara Wickham, British Council in Korea

Ice formation in iron containing hydrogel films

The states of water in polymers, including ice formation, is of increasing interest for a broad range of science and engineering, including the application and the longevity of water-bourne polymeric coatings, cryogenic preservation of cells and organs, ice mediated porous structure formation, freeze-drying process in food preservation, low temperature operation of batteries and supercapacitors, and the tailing pond sedimentation in oil sands production. The freezing point of water is heavily influenced by the polymer-water interaction and the concentration of ionic species in the water and in the polymer backbones. Various species of salt ions are abundant in the operating conditions for the polymeric materials, but their effect on the water in polymers has not been studied exhaustively. Polyampholytes, which contains both cationic and anionic groups in their backbones, are an interesting class of material with its hygroscopic nature with intrinsic self-healing ability. By tuning the salt concentration, the water freezing point in the polyampholytes is expected to be widely tunable, rendering the material as a promising lubrication layer at low temperatures. The overall scope of our work is to understand, in depth, (i) the phenomenon of freezing point depression of water in ion containing polyampholyte hydrogels and (ii) the effect of the restricted ice formation on the surface lubrication of the hydrogel coatings. In the current presentation, I will talk about the scope (i). Here, we hypothesize a simplified model for the water in polyampholyte films to predict the freezing point depression in aqueous solution with multiple solutes that mimics true environmental conditions. Specifically, we aim to predict the freezing point depression of water in polyampholytic hydrogels that contains multiple salt components. First of all, it is important to note that the water molecules can exist in the hydrogel in various forms, ranging from tightly bound molecules adsorbed on polymer network, to weakly bound molecules, to free, bulk-like molecules. The amount of bound water can be determined with the parameters for the synthesis of the polymer network. The fraction of bound and free waters can be quantified by the degree of swelling. Free water can be described as the mixture of water and ions that are not bound to the polymer networks. Its freezing point depression can be precisely predicted with a multisolute osmotic virial equation by Elliott et al [1-4]: (1) where R is the universal gas constant, T is the temperature, Mwater is the molar mass of water, Tmo is the absolute freezing point of pure water, and is the standard molar entropy change of fusion of water. The osmolality, π, can be deduced from multi-solute osmotic virial eqation, which designates fitting parameters for each ionic components in water. The behavior of water is studied with various experimental methods, such as differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) for determining the phase transitions of free and bound water, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) for the molecular structure around the water molecules and around the infused ions, and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) for detecting specific polymer-water interactions, as well as microscopic techniques to directly observe ice formation events. In short, the effect of multicomponent salt on water freezing point depression in polyampholytes can be systematically predicted by (i) decoupling the relative amount of bound and free water as a function of polymer synthesis parameters, (ii) elucidating the nature of bound water and their role in ice formation, and (iii) predicting the freezing point depression of free water component by the multisolute osmotic virial equation