Immersion Wort Chiller Optimization: Project-Based Learning in Undergraduate Heat Transfer

Project-Based Learning (PjBL) has been adopted as a highly effective teaching-learning style worldwide in the last few decades in the engineering educational community. Major benefits for students who participated in Project-Based Learning include achieving higher level of motivation, greater depth of understanding of basic concepts, increased creativity, improved teamwork skills and interpersonal communication skills. In this paper we reported a fun example project that can be used in undergraduate heat transfer class for Project-Based Learning: Optimization of an immersion wort chiller for a small-scale home beer brewing process. Students were self-grouped with three to five students in each group. Each group was then provided with a 10-foot-long copper tube of diameter 3/8 inch to design and optimize an immersion wort chiller that can cool a bucket of hot water as fast as possible. Preliminary evaluation of learning experience enhancement was performed by conducting a survey among the students at the end of the semester. The purpose of the survey was to identify what they had learned in such a project, and whether or not the project improved their learning experiences. Positive feedback and outcomes were observed.Cockrell School of Engineerin

Estimating the impact of transport efficiency on trade costs: Evidence from Chinese agricultural traders

Using a unique survey data on agricultural traders in China in 2004, this study provides direct evidence on significance of interregional transport costs and their key determinants. Our major findings are as follows: (1) the trade barriers within China are dominated by transport-related costs but not artificial barriers, approximated by tolls and fines; (2) Labor and fuels costs are the most significant component of transport costs; (3) road quality is very important for transportation efficiency. Our results indicate that if increasing transport speed by 1 km per hour now, the fuel costs and total direct transportation costs for Chinese traders would reduce by 1.3% and 0.7% respectively.Transportation Costs, China, Agricultural Traders, Infrastructure, International Relations/Trade,

The Practicality of Cloud Computing

Since its inception, cloud computing has become the current paradigm. Organizations of different size and type have embraced the concept because of its both technological and economic advantages. Sacred Heart University Library has recently published its newly designed website on the cloud. For a small academic library, what does it mean to put their online data on the cloud? This paper will analyze and discuss the advantages of cloud computing, and some potential obstacles created by it through the author’s observations. This paper hopes the uniqueness of the case will contribute to the improvement of cloud computing experience of other libraries

What Would be the Future of the Integrated Library Systems?

Since the advent of Integrated Library Systems (ILSs) in 1970s, they have gone from being innovative to stagnant. In recent years, the rapid advancement of web technologies and the exponential growth of electronic resources and digital contents have increasingly exposed the weakness of traditional ILSs. The lack of flexibility, interoperability, and efficiency makes the ILSs hardly meet the needs of both internal and external library users. Meanwhile Content Management Systems (CMS) such as Drupal and open source ILSs have gotten much attention due to their technological and economic advantages, and cloud computing has allowed libraries to focus on bigger pictures. Facing the unprecedented challenges, major ILS vendors are pressed to develop the next generation ILS; nonetheless, the concrete ideas of the future ILSs are still being investigated. The paper will reference the developmental history of ILSs to discuss the limitations of the current ILSs, the unavoidable transformation these systems are facing, and some aspects or features that the next-generation ILSs are expected to contain