EML: van techniek naar didactiek

Een speciale plaats binnen de leertechnologie wordt ingenomen door Educational Modelling Language, een aanvulling op de al eerder bestaande afspraken over leerobjecten. Voor goed onderwijs zijn leerobjecten weliswaar een noodzakelijke, maar niet voldoende voorwaarde. EML is een modelleringstaal die uitgaat van <i>complete</i> leereenheden waarin naast leerobjecten vooral de <i>leerprocessen</i> worden beschreven

Development of Wearable Systems for Ubiquitous Healthcare Service Provisioning

This paper reports on the development of a wearable system using wireless biomedical sensors for ubiquitous healthcare service provisioning. The prototype system is developed to address current healthcare challenges such as increasing cost of services, inability to access diverse services, low quality services and increasing population of elderly as experienced globally. The biomedical sensors proactively collect physiological data of remote patients to recommend diagnostic services. The prototype system is designed to monitor oxygen saturation level (SpO2), Heart Rate (HR), activity and location of the elderly. Physiological data collected are uploaded to a Health Server (HS) via GPRS/Internet for analysis.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, APCBEE Procedia 7, 2013. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1309.154

Promoting Public Health and Safety: A Predictive Modeling Software Analysis on Perceived Road Fatality Contributory Factors

Extensive literature search was conducted to computationally analyze the relationship between key perceived road fatality factors and public health impacts, in terms of mortality and morbidity. Heterogeneous sources of data on road fatality 1970-2005 and that based on interview questionnaire on European road drivers’ perception were sourced. Computational analysis was performed on these data using the Multilayer Perceptron model within the dtreg predictive modeling software. Driver factors had the highest relative significance. Drivers played significant role as causative agents of road accidents. A good degree of correlation was also observed when compared with results obtained by previous researchers. Sweden, UK, Finland, Denmark, Germany, France, Netherlands, and Austria, where road safety targets were set and EU targets adopted, experienced a faster and sharper reduction of road fatalities. However, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Portugal experienced slow, but little reduction in cases of road fatalities. Spain experienced an increase in road fatalities possibly due to road fatalities enhancing factors. Estonia, Slovenia, Cyprus, Hungry, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland experienced a fluctuating but decreasing trend. Enforcement of road safety principles and regulations are needed to decrease the incidences of fatal accidents. Adoption of the EU target of -50% reductions of fatalities in all countries will help promote public health and safety

Improving Carbon and Process Utilization for Biomass-to-Liquid Fuel Operations

With the increasing world demand for transportation fuels, declining petroleum reserves and quest for energy security, there is a renewed interest in Fischer-Tropsch (FT) technology as a viable alternative for the production of liquid fuels from carbonaceous resources (natural gas, coal and biomass). Concern about global warming has also created a special interest in the use of biomass (Biom ass-ToLiquid Fuels, BTL) as a carbon-neutral route to liquid fuels. However, carbon utilization in BTL via traditional biomass gasification is between 25 – 40 % of carbons in the biomass feedstock. This results in poor process economy. Energy input from concentrated solar power (CSP) into BTL can salvage undue large carbon discharge in traditional BTL. The CSP-BTL hybrid not only improves carbon utilization but is also a plausible strategy for solar energy storage

Predicting Fraud in Mobile Phone Usage Using Artificial Neural Networks

Mobile phone usage involves the use of wireless communication devices that can be carried anywhere, as they require no physical connection to any external wires to work. However, mobile technology is not without its own problems. Fraud is prevalent in both fixed and mobile networks of all technologies. Frauds have plagued the telecommunication industries, financial institutions and other organizations for a long time. The aim of this research work and research publication is to apply 3 different neural network models (Fuzzy, Radial Basis and the Feedforward) to the prediction of fraud in real-life data of phone usage and also analyze and evaluate their performances with respect to their predicting capability. From the analysis and model predictability experiment carried out in this scientific research work, it was discovered that the fuzzy network model had the minimum error generated in its fraud predicting capability. Thus, its performance in terms of the error generated in this fraud prediction experiment showed that its NMSE (Normalized mean squared error) for the fraud predicted was 1.98264609. The mean absolute error (M AE = 15.00987244) for its fraud prediction was also the least; this showed that the fuzzy model fraud predictability was much better than the other two models

Electrical conductivity of hot Abelian plasma with scalar charge carriers

We study the electrical conductivity of hot Abelian plasma containing scalar charge carriers in the leading logarithmic order in coupling constant $\alpha$ using the Boltzmann kinetic equation. The leading contribution to the collision integral is due to the M{\o}ller and Bhabha scattering of scalar particles with a singular cross section in the region of small momentum transfer. Regularizing this singularity by taking into account the hard thermal loop corrections to the propagators of intermediate particles, we derive the second order differential equation which determines the kinetic function. We solve this equation numerically and also use a variational approach in order to find a simple analytical formula for the conductivity. It has the standard parametric dependence on the coupling constant $\sigma\approx 2.38\, T/(\alpha \log\alpha^{-1})$ with the prefactor taking a somewhat lower value compared to the fermionic case. Finally, we consider the general case of hot Abelian plasma with an arbitrary number of scalar and fermionic particle species and derive the simple analytical formula for its conductivity.Comment: 36 pages, 2 figures, 4 table

DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A BIOINFORMATICS ONLINE DISTANCE EDUCATION LEARNING TOOL FOR AFRICA

Bioinformatics refers to the creation and advancement of algorithms, computational and statistical techniques and theories for solving formal and practical problems arising from the management and analysis of biological data. However, some parts of the African continent have not been properly sensitized to bio-scientific and computing field. Thus, there is the need for appropriate strategies of introducing the basic components of this emerging scientific field to part of the African populace through the development of an online distance education learning tool. This study involved the design of a bioinformatics online distance educative tool an implementation of the bioinformatics online distance educative tool by a programming approach. Design and implementation were done using the Borland Delphi 7 Enterprise edition within its Integrated Development Environment. The advantage of using Delphi programming language in implementing this useful bioinformatics web tool is that Delphi programming language is an object oriented programming language that has a lot of extra facilities for the enhancement of further technical functions, which ordinary HTML cannot handle. The development and use of a bioinformatics distance education software, as a teaching tool, in some African countries holds great promise for accommodating the needs of the populace, who live in cities, small towns and remote areas