Design and Develop a Cost Effective Microcontroller Training System for Distance Learning Engineering Students

This is the review of a NSF funded project that addresses the hands-on distance learning needs in microprocessor/microcontroller related courses. A research team designed a low cost training system with supporting instructional materials to assist the teaching of these concepts. Individual laboratory activities are being developed to reinforce student learning and skill development in programming concepts. This basic system format eventually will support an array of technology courses. This project involves two community colleges, Blue Ridge Community College (BRCC), VA and Olympic College (OC), WA, and a four-year university, Old Dominion University (ODU), VA, in a collaborative research team to design and develop a specific PIC microcontroller training system with customized designed software and curriculum materials to support related engineering technology courses. The functions of the hardware and software cover different areas of engineering technology courses and majors to maximize the use of the microcontroller training system

Automated unit-level testing with heuristic rules

Software testing plays a significant role in the development of complex software systems. Current testing methods generally require significant effort to generate meaningful test cases. The QUEST/Ada system is a prototype system designed using CLIPS to experiment with expert system based test case generation. The prototype is designed to test for condition coverage, and attempts to generate test cases to cover all feasible branches contained in an Ada program. This paper reports on heuristics sued by the system. These heuristics vary according to the amount of knowledge obtained by preprocessing and execution of the boolean conditions in the program

Interpreting the Basic Law with Chinese characteristics

Written for the 29 November 1997 session of the Basic Law Series, sponsored by the University of Hong Kong Centre of Comparative and Public Law, in conjunction with the Hong Kong Bar Association. I am grateful for comments on an earlier draft graciously extended by Mr. Stephen Kai-yi Wong, Acting Solicitor General, HKSAR. Any remaining imperfections remain my sole responsibility

New world order and a new U.S. policy toward China

While domestic politics is divided between Congress and the White House, generally along partisan lines, President Bill Clinton’s al-out engagement policy toward China, announced shortly after he began his second term in office, is aimed at fostering a Sino-US partenship for the twenty-first century. Below, I shall explain that this policy came at the end of three separate policy reviews conducted since Clinton’s first term. Here, though, I would like to note that rationale of the new China policy is in keeping with the requirements of the new world order, to meet the challenge posed by the three attributes identified above. As is often noted, US policy toward China has followed two opposing pulls since 1972: When guided by the strategic icate, Washington would treat China as an ally in its own contention with an even more ominous threat, such as the former Soviet Union. But when the human-rights issue or other considerations won out, China would end up being a rogue state or, worse still, an enemy of the United States (cf. Wing Wan 1997). When geneconomic considerations entered into the picture, China would be seen as a threat or challenge, in its own right, to America’s economic security (witness the $50 billion deficit in America’s trade with China!). Beginning with his second term, however, Clinton opted to follow the strategic pull (Wing Wan, p. 249), for reasons I shall explain in due course

The paradox of Hong Kong as a non-sovereign international actor

In this paper, I shall not have the luxury of looking equally into the SAR’s domestic performances. Instead, I shall focus on the inchoate evidence of how the HKSAR has met with circumstances or treatment by foreign countries quite at variance with many pundits’ expectations regarding Hong Kong’s international status and capacity to act. To illustrate this point, we need to examine some existing cases. But, for an easier flow of discussion, I propose that we first look at some juridical cases that will demonstrate how Hong Kong’s international capacity to act has been given a short shrift by foreign tribunals and judicial organs. Following that, we shall extend our inquiry to non-legal cases and issues

Structure and Replication of Alphavirus RNAs

Both ends of the alphavirus genomic RNA are potentially important in its replication. The region preceding and including the 5'-end of the subgenomic 26S RNA in genomic RNA might also be involved in 26S RNA transcription. Sequences of these regions of up to 10 alphaviruses were determined by using strategies including enzymatic, chain-termination and cDNA sequencing methods. Comparison of the nucleotide sequences reveals three highly conserved sequences. The first conserved sequence is 19 nucleotides in length and is located at the extreme 3'-end next to the poly(A) tail. The second conserved sequence, which is 21 nucleotides in length, precedes the 5'-end of 26S RNA and includes the first two nucleotides of it. The third conserved sequence is 51 nucleotides in length and is located at a position of about 130 to 150 nucleotides from the 5'-end, depending on the virus. The last conserved sequence in all alphaviruses examined is capable of forming two stable hairpin structures and could also base-pair stably with the 3'-terminal sequences to cyclize genomic RNAs. Besides these three conserved sequences, a highly conserved stem and loop structure could also be formed at the extreme 5'-end of genomic RNA. Defective interfering (DI) RNAs of alphaviruses are mutated genomic RNAs which often contain deleted, repeated and translocated sequences, but yet retain all elements essential for their replication. By studying the sequence organization of alphavirus DI RNAs, and the 3'-terminal sequences of the genomic RNAs of two alphavirus variants and their replication, the importance of these conserved sequences and secondary structures in alphavirus replication are discussed. Both the 3'- and 5'-terminal sequences of several alphavirus 26S RNAs were also determined. Results show that 26S and genomic RNAs are coterminal. Together with the results previously published, the total length of the 26S RNAs of two alphaviruses, Sindbis virus and Semliki Forest virus, were determined to be 4102 and 4074 nucleotides, respectively. The NH2- and COOH-terminal sequences of the precursors of nonstructural proteins (translated from genomic RNA) and structural proteins (translated from 26S RNA) of several alphaviruses were deduced from the nucleotide sequences determined. The initiation codons of most alphavirus genomic and 26S RNAs are preceded by the sequence CANN. To determine the importance of these tetranucleotides, their sequences in 65 eucaryotic mRNAs were surveyed. Results show that the sequence distribution of these tetranucleotides are non-random and they might be involved in initiation of translation. The 3'-noncoding regions of alphavirus genomic RNAs contain AU rich sequences. Sequence organization in the 3'-noncoding regions is similar to those in alphavirus DI RNAs. Mechanisms for the generation of these sequence rearrangements are discussed.</p

Designing a Microcontroller Training Platform for Active Distance Learning Engineering and Technology Students

This is an active distance-learning project that addresses the hands-on microprocessor/ mi-crocontroller-related courses. A research team designed a low-cost training system with supporting instructional materials to assist the teaching of these concepts. Individual laboratory activities are being developed to reinforce student learning and skill development in programming concepts. This basic system format eventually will support an array of engineering and technology courses. This project involves two community colleges, Blue Ridge Community College (BRCC) and Olympic College (OC), and a four-year university, Old Dominion University (ODU), in a collaborative research team to design and develop a specific PIC microcontroller training system with custom-designed software and curriculum materials to support related engineering technology courses. The functions of the hardware and software cover different areas of engineering technology courses and majors to maximize the use of the microcon- troller training system