An Integrated Service Project for Junior and Senior Students

Project-Based Service-Learning (PBSL) offers a unique and rich educational experience for engineering students. The present work highlights some of its aspects through the discussion of a multi-level design and build project. A service project was assigned to two teams of junior and senior students. The project was to design and build a bubble tower for the local children’s museum. The tower was completed in two phases. In the first phase, it was assigned as a final project in a junior level course. In the second phase, another team of seniors was added to lead the design optimization and building of the tower as their capstone experience. The Service-Learning (SL) nature of the project and having two teams at different academic levels added challenges and benefits to the students. The details of this unique experience are discussed and samples from the students’ work are presented. The project was completed successfully with positive feedback from the students, the customer and the local community. Reflections about this project and recommendations for future use of similar SL are also presented

Cooperation and Underlay Mode Selection in Cognitive Radio Network

In this research, we proposes a new method for cooperation and underlay mode selection in cognitive radio networks. We characterize the maximum achievable throughput of our proposed method of hybrid spectrum sharing. Hybrid spectrum sharing is assumed where the Secondary User (SU) can access the Primary User (PU) channel in two modes, underlay mode or cooperative mode with admission control. In addition to access the channel in the overlay mode, secondary user is allowed to occupy the channel currently occupied by the primary user but with small transmission power. Adding the underlay access modes attains more opportunities to the secondary user to transmit data. It is proposed that the secondary user can only exploits the underlay access when the channel of the primary user direct link is good or predicted to be in non-outage state. Therefore, the secondary user could switch between underlay spectrum sharing and cooperation with the primary user. Hybrid access is regulated through monitoring the state of the primary link. By observing the simulation results, the proposed model attains noticeable improvement in the system performance in terms of maximum secondary user throughput than the conventional cooperation and non-cooperation schemes

Nonlinearly charged Lifshitz black holes for any exponent z>1z>1

Charged Lifshitz black holes for the Einstein-Proca-Maxwell system with a negative cosmological constant in arbitrary dimension $D$ are known only if the dynamical critical exponent is fixed as $z=2(D-2)$. In the present work, we show that these configurations can be extended to much more general charged black holes which in addition exist for any value of the dynamical exponent $z>1$ by considering a nonlinear electrodynamics instead of the Maxwell theory. More precisely, we introduce a two-parametric nonlinear electrodynamics defined in the more general, but less known, so-called $(\mathcal{H},P)$-formalism and obtain a family of charged black hole solutions depending on two parameters. We also remark that the value of the dynamical exponent $z=D-2$ turns out to be critical in the sense that it yields asymptotically Lifshitz black holes with logarithmic decay supported by a particular logarithmic electrodynamics. All these configurations include extremal Lifshitz black holes. Charged topological Lifshitz black holes are also shown to emerge by slightly generalizing the proposed electrodynamics

Institutions and Mechanisms for Internal Conflict Resolution: Legal and Non-Legal Means in Resolving Dispute and Attaining Justice in Malaysia

Seeking justice is a noble cause and dispensing justice is an obligation that the state must fulfill. Under the doctrine of separation of powers courts exist to protect people and their rights, to guarantee fairness and justice for all. The task to combat injustices, produce a just ordering of society, ensure a fair distribution of material and legal resources, safeguard the rule of law, promote equality, ensure proportionality in punishment, and protect entitlements and legitimate expectations should not be put on the shoulders of judges and courts only. It must be spread out and shared by other institutions and by whatever means availabl

Numerical solutions of two-point boundary value problems in Chebyshev series

Series expressed in terms of Chebyshev polynomials are applied using Lie series to the iterative solution of ordinary differential equations. After a discussion of initial value problems, the method is then used to solve two-point boundary value problems and an improved method of shooting type is derived and tested

Improving reverse supply chain performance: The role of supply chain leadership and governance mechanisms

Recently, a growing interest has been devoted to the role of buying firms in promoting sustainability across supply chains. However, relatively little attention has been given to how the behaviour of a buying firm affects the performance of reverse supply chains. Within this context, this paper investigates the role of Supply Chain Leadership styles on suppliers' performance dimensions related to reverse product flows. Furthermore, the mediating role of two governance mechanisms (namely trust and legal-legitimate power) on this relationship is examined. This study employs structural equation modelling to analyse data collected from 190 manufacturing companies in Malaysia. The paper concludes that transformational and transactional leaderships are significant and positive contributors to suppliers’ reverse supply chain performance; trust and power significantly mediate these relationships

Geometry-material coordination for passive adaptive solar morphing envelopes

The cost-intensive and mechanical complexity natures of the adaptive facades of the past decades drifted designers and researchers’ interest towards passive material-based actuation systems. Architectural applications using the latter showed, however, a few limitations restricting the output possibility space to options that rely entirely on one material’s phase characteristic. This study aims to investigate the potential of expanding a shape memory alloy-actuated facade’s output from one that is limited and hardly controllable in the case of entirely passive actuation to one that can produce a specific desired performative target. This is explored through coordinating between geometry movement connections of an adaptive component of four integrated shape memory alloys, which work on tailoring the geometry-material-climate relations of the responsive system. The research findings suggest that the integration of geometry, material, and their connections in the design of a SMA solar morphing envelope lead to the development of a wider range of behavioural system outputs. The variety instilled through these added dimensions promoted diversity and adaptability of output for a flexible range of responses and higher performative gains