Discovery learning approach to classic electrical machines principles

This paper aims at presenting the concept of Socratic interactions and discovery learning of classic electrical machines principles. The theories of electrical machines are by nature quite boring and abstract although there are a lot of experiments supported the theories. Traditional, students learnt the subject by drill and practice approach with standard textbooks. In the past two decades, computer is no doubt recognized to be the educational tool. The so-called “interactive” approach is applied to the learning process. Most of this approach applied to various subjects in different levels is mainly based on drill and practice. However, few packages are developed for electrical machine subject. In this paper, two different approaches “Rote Learning” and “Discovery Learning” applied to the interactive computer aided learning package of classic electric machine principles are discussed. Design of a discovery learning approach will also be presented

The effect of 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid and 6-benzylaminopurine on callus induction and plant regeneration of allamanda cathartica - a valuable medicinal plant

Allamanda cathartica is a potential medicinal plant which starts to achieve awareness in society due to its value to treat various types of diseases, especially in the treatment of jaundice, malaria and cancer. In the present study, the effects of 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) and 6-benzylaminopurine (BAP) on the callus induction from the leaf and stem explants were investigated. Plant regeneration from the nodal explants was achieved. Surface sterilization by mercuric chloride (HgCl2) was utilized in order to surface sterilize the leaf (0.1), stem and nodal (0.2) explants. The leaf and stem explants were cultured on full-strength Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with different concentrations of 2,4-D alone (0.5 and 1.0 mg/L) or in combinations of 2,4-D (0.5, 1.0 and 1.5 mg/L) with BAP (0.5, 1.0 and 1.5 mg/L). In the study of plant regeneration, the nodal explants were cultured on MS medium supplemented with BAP at 1.0, 3.0 or 5.0 mg/L for shoot multiplication. MS basal medium was used as a control and also used for shoot elongation. All the cultures were incubated under a photoperiod of 16 hours light and 8 hours darkness. For callus induction, the leaf and stem explants cultured on 1.0 mg/L 2,4-D and 1.0 mg/L BAP gave the best callus response (100) with yellow-white, greenish friable callus (0.0707 +/- 0.0549 g with callus initiated after 6 days) and brown-white, greenish friable callus (0.0207 +/- 0.0009 g with callus initiated after 5 days), respectively. For shoot multiplication, MS supplemented with 5 mg/L BAP gave the best response (100) with multiple shoots formed (6 +/- 0.6 shoots per explant) from the nodal explants. In the plant growth regulator (PGR)-free medium, the elongated shoots were developed (1.01 +/- 0.07 cm) with white hairy roots

ON-FARM GROWER-FRIENDLY NURSERY TECHNIQUE FOR ACCLIMATIZATION OF TISSUE-CULTURED BANANA SEEDLINGS

Banana is one of the common fruit preferences in the world. The market demand for this crop increasing year round. Tissue-cultured banana seedlings are getting widely used as planting materials among the growers for its quality assured properties, particularly for commercial plantation. However, most of the small scale growers are still using conventional planting sources (water suckers and sword suckers). They do not prefer tissue-cultured seedlings due to its expensive price, delicate to handle and often result in high post-transplanting mortality rate. The considerably high cost is due to the process of producing the tissue-cultured seedlings at the nursery stage (acclimatization). Even at the nursery stage, the conventional acclimatization process of the plantlets in the nursery results in non-uniformity of establishment and high mortality rate. The research was conducted to develop a nursery technique that will improve these drawbacks in order to improve greater acceptance and responsive level for the growers towards tissue-cultured seedlings. Based on the results, the developed technique has increased the survival rate (reducing mortality rate) of seedlings as compared to the conventional technique. In addition, this developed technique can be adopted on-farm instead of using protected nursery as conventionally practiced. Using this technique, the seedlings would be more easily adapted to the farm after transplanting. Ordinary farmers prefer younger seedlings (10-15cm in height) for planting as they grow faster than that of older seedlings with common quality (15-25cm in height). Girth size of seedlings would be the higher consideration in meeting the requirement for transplanting purpose. The developed technique has shown better growth performance in both height and girth parameters in the first 36 days as compared to conventional technique. Meaning that this helps to shorten the nursery period and create an alternative standard for seedlings to be transplanted

Predicting dementia diagnosis from cognitive footprints in electronic health records: a case-control study protocol

INTRODUCTION: Dementia is a group of disabling disorders that can be devastating for persons living with it and for their families. Data-informed decision-making strategies to identify individuals at high risk of dementia are essential to facilitate large-scale prevention and early intervention. This population-based case-control study aims to develop and validate a clinical algorithm for predicting dementia diagnosis, based on the cognitive footprint in personal and medical history. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: We will use territory-wide electronic health records from the Clinical Data Analysis and Reporting System (CDARS) in Hong Kong between 1 January 2001 and 31 December 2018. All individuals who were at least 65 years old by the end of 2018 will be identified from CDARS. A random sample of control individuals who did not receive any diagnosis of dementia will be matched with those who did receive such a diagnosis by age, gender and index date with 1:1 ratio. Exposure to potential protective/risk factors will be included in both conventional logistic regression and machine-learning models. Established risk factors of interest will include diabetes mellitus, midlife hypertension, midlife obesity, depression, head injuries and low education. Exploratory risk factors will include vascular disease, infectious disease and medication. The prediction accuracy of several state-of-the-art machine-learning algorithms will be compared. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: This study was approved by Institutional Review Board of The University of Hong Kong/Hospital Authority Hong Kong West Cluster (UW 18-225). Patients' records are anonymised to protect privacy. Study results will be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications. Codes of the resulted dementia risk prediction algorithm will be made publicly available at the website of the Tools to Inform Policy: Chinese Communities' Action in Response to Dementia project (https://www.tip-card.hku.hk/)

Extending CRM in the Retail Industry: An RFID-Based Personal Shopping Assistant System

This paper describes the research and development of a radio frequency identification (RFID)-based personal shopping assistant (PSA) system for retail stores. RFID technology was employed as the key enabler to build a PSA system to optimize operational efficiency and deliver a superior customer shopping experience in retail stores. We show that an RFID-based PSA system can deliver significant results to improve the customer shopping experience and retail store operational efficiency, by increasing customer convenience, providing flexibility in service delivery, enhancing promotional campaign efficiency, and increasing product cross selling and upselling through a customer relationship management (CRM) system. In this study, an RFID value grid for retail stores is proposed that allows managers to use RFID technology in stores to add value to the shopping experience of their customers. Four propositions are presented as the research agenda for examining the ability of RFID technology to improve the operations management of retail stores

Normal Cones and Thompson Metric

The aim of this paper is to study the basic properties of the Thompson metric $d_T$ in the general case of a real linear space $X$ ordered by a cone $K$. We show that $d_T$ has monotonicity properties which make it compatible with the linear structure. We also prove several convexity properties of $d_T$ and some results concerning the topology of $d_T$, including a brief study of the $d_T$-convergence of monotone sequences. It is shown most of the results are true without any assumption of an Archimedean-type property for $K$. One considers various completeness properties and one studies the relations between them. Since $d_T$ is defined in the context of a generic ordered linear space, with no need of an underlying topological structure, one expects to express its completeness in terms of properties of the ordering, with respect to the linear structure. This is done in this paper and, to the best of our knowledge, this has not been done yet. The Thompson metric $d_T$ and order-unit (semi)norms $|\cdot|_u$ are strongly related and share important properties, as both are defined in terms of the ordered linear structure. Although $d_T$ and $|\cdot|_u$ are only topological (and not metrical) equivalent on $K_u$, we prove that the completeness is a common feature. One proves the completeness of the Thompson metric on a sequentially complete normal cone in a locally convex space. At the end of the paper, it is shown that, in the case of a Banach space, the normality of the cone is also necessary for the completeness of the Thompson metric.Comment: 36 page

Inhibition of STAT3 dimerization and acetylation by garcinol suppresses the growth of human hepatocellular carcinoma in vitro and in vivo

10.1186/1476-4598-13-66Molecular Cancer131-MCOA