Rural Roads: The Challenge of Decentralized Implementation

This paper will review the key elements required for effective decentralized implementation of rural roads programs. It will review the range of options available and the evidence for successful implementation where it exists. Section 2 makes the case for the importance of rural roads and sets out the evidence for the socio-economic benefits. Section 3 addresses the responsibilities for implementation and critical importance of having clarity over network ownership. Section 4 highlights the difficulties of finance, particularly for longer term maintenance, and sets out options for improving allocations and the reliability of receipt for those allocations. Section 5 sets out the project cycle from planning, design, implementation, maintenance and subsequent evaluation. Section 6 summarizes the key issues and highlights the main policy considerations

The Millennium Galaxy Catalogue: morphological classification and bimodality in the colour-concentration plane

Using 10 095 galaxies (B < 20 mag) from the Millennium Galaxy Catalogue, we derive B-band luminosity distributions and selected bivariate brightness distributions for the galaxy population. All subdivisions extract highly correlated sub-sets of the galaxy population which consistently point towards two overlapping distributions. A clear bimodality in the observed distribution is seen in both the rest-(u-r) colour and log(n) distributions. The rest-(u-r) colour bimodality becomes more pronounced when using the core colour as opposed to global colour. The two populations are extremely well separated in the colour-log(n) plane. Using our sample of 3 314 (B < 19 mag) eyeball classified galaxies, we show that the bulge-dominated, early-type galaxies populate one peak and the bulge-less, late-type galaxies occupy the second. The early- and mid-type spirals sprawl across and between the peaks. This constitutes extremely strong evidence that the fundamental way to divide the luminous galaxy population is into bulges and discs and that the galaxy bimodality reflects the two component nature of galaxies and not two distinct galaxy classes. We argue that these two-components require two independent formation mechanisms/processes and advocate early bulge formation through initial collapse and ongoing disc formation through splashback, infall and merging/accretion. We calculate the B-band luminosity-densities and stellar-mass densities within each subdivision and estimate that the z ~ 0 stellar mass content in spheroids, bulges and discs is 35 +/- 2 per cent, 18 +/- 7 and 47 +/- 7 per cent respectively. [Abridged]Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS, 23 pages, 17 figures. Comments welcome. MGC website is at: http://www.eso.org/~jliske/mgc

Making it real: exploring the potential of Augmented Reality for teaching primary school science

The use of Augmented Reality (AR) in formal education could prove a key component in future learning environments that are richly populated with a blend of hardware and software applications. However, relatively little is known about the potential of this technology to support teaching and learning with groups of young children in the classroom. Analysis of teacher-child dialogue in a comparative study between use of an AR virtual mirror interface and more traditional science teaching methods for 10-year-old children, revealed that the children using AR were less engaged than those using traditional resources. We suggest four design requirements that need to be considered if AR is to be successfully adopted into classroom practice. These requirements are: flexible content that teachers can adapt to the needs of their children, guided exploration so learning opportunities can be maximised, in a limited time, and attention to the needs of institutional and curricular requirements

Human Resource Needs and Demand for Post-Secondary Education in the Canadian Secondary Wood Products Industry

Skilled labor shortages in manufacturing industries are being reported in a number of countries. The extent to which such shortages are affecting Canadian wood manufacturing industries is not known. The aim of this study was to survey the skills and educational needs of Canadian wood manufacturing industries, the status, capacity, and challenges that post-secondary education institutes face in meeting industries' human resource needs, and finally the attractiveness of the industry to high school job-seekers. The majority (83%) of wood manufacturing companies in Canada are experiencing problems in hiring skilled tradespeople, and 54.5% of the companies face difficulties in hiring and retaining professionals and supervisory personnel. Skilled staff shortages and competitive pressures were nominated by companies as the two most important factors restricting their growth. The skills needs of companies have changed over the last 10 years, and companies now place a much higher premium on leadership and communication skills from management, and attitude and advanced technical skills from tradespeople. Most companies offered some kind of in-house training to redress skills gaps, but less than half were likely to use the Internet to deliver in-house training. The majority of high school students were not interested in pursuing a career in the wood manufacturing industry because of its association with unsustainable forestry practices and manual labor, and the availability of more attractive career options. Lack of student interest in wood manufacturing is affecting the institutions offering relevant vocational and professional training, and nine of the thirteen institutes suffer from under-enrollment in their wood manufacturing programs. Comprehensive strategies are required to address the labor market imbalances currently affecting Canada's wood manufacturing industries

Experimental demonstration of an all-optical interferometric drop, add, and extract multiplexer for OFDM super-channel

The experimental implementation of an all-optical node able of routing a channel contained in an all-optical OFDM super-channel is presented. The extract function is performed through channel selection, reshaping and interferometric suppression

Experimental implementation of an all-optical interferometric drop, add, and extract multiplexer for superchannels

We present the experimental implementation of an all-optical ROADM scheme for routing of an individual subchannel within an all-optical OFDM superchannel. The different functions required of optical node were demonstrated using interferometric technique with the extraction, drop, and addition of individual subchannel in a ten subchannels optically aggregated signal. The scheme we reported enables a fully flexible node compatible with future terabit per second superchannel transmission

Context-Gated Statistical Learning and Its Role in Visual-Saccadic Decisions

Adaptive behavior in a nonstationary world requires humans to learn and track the statistics of the environment. We examined the mechanisms of adaptation in a nonstationary environment in the context of visual-saccadic inhibition of return (IOR). IOR is adapted to the likelihood that return locations will be refixated in the near future. We examined 2 potential learning mechanisms underlying adaptation: (a) a local tracking or priming mechanism that facilitates behavior that is consistent with recent experience and (b) a mechanism that supports retrieval of knowledge of the environmental statistics based on the contextual features of the environment. Participants generated sequences of 2 saccadic eye movements in conditions where the probability that the 2nd saccade was directed back to the previously fixated location varied from low (.17) to high (.50). In some conditions, the contingency was signaled by a contextual cue (the shape of the movement cue). Adaptation occurred in the absence of contextual signals but was more pronounced in the presence of contextual cues. Adaptation even occurred when different contingencies were randomly intermixed, showing the parallel formation of multiple associations between context and statistics. These findings are accounted for by an evidence accumulation framework in which the resting baseline of decision alternatives is adjusted on a trial-by-trial basis. This baseline tracks the subjective prior beliefs about the behavioral relevance of the different alternatives and is updated on the basis of the history of recent events and the contextual features of the current environment

Re-evaluating age-of-acquisition effects: Are they simply cumulative-frequency effects?

Abstract The time it takes to read or produce a word is in¯uenced by the word&apos;s age of acquisition (AoA) and its frequency (e.g. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 12 (1973) 85). Lewis (Cognition 71 (1999) B23) suggested that a parsimonious explanation would be that it is the total number of times a word has been encountered that predicts reaction times. Such a cumulative-frequency hypothesis, however, has always been rejected because the statistical effects of AoA and frequency are additive. Here, it is demonstrated mathematically that the cumulative-frequency hypothesis actually predicts such results when applied to curvilinear learning. Further, the data from four in¯uential studies (two of which claim support for independent effects of AoA and frequency) are re-analyzed to reveal that, in fact, they are consistent with a cumulative-frequency hypothesis. The conclusion drawn is that there is no evidence with which to refute the most parsimonious of explanations, i.e. cumulative frequency can account for both frequency and AoA effects.

Impact of Raman amplification on a 2 Tb/s coherent WDM system

The impact of hybrid erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA)/Raman amplification on a spectrally efficient coherent-wavelength-division-multiplexed (CoWDM) optical communication system is experimentally studied and modeled. Simulations suggested that 23-dB Raman gain over an unrepeatered span of 124 km single-mode fiber would allow a decrease of the mean input power of ~6 dB for a fixed bit-error rate (BER). Experimentally we demonstrated 1.2-dB Q-factor improvement for a 2-Tb/s seven-band CoWDM with backward Raman amplification. The system delivered an optical signal-to-noise ratio of 35 dB at the output of the receiver preamplifier providing a worst-case BER of 2 × 10 -6 over 49 subcarriers at 42.8 Gbaud, leaving a system margin (in terms of Q -factor) of ~4 dB from the forward-error correction threshold