Modeling of Time with Metamaterials

Metamaterials have been already used to model various exotic "optical spaces". Here we demonstrate that mapping of monochromatic extraordinary light distribution in a hyperbolic metamaterial along some spatial direction may model the "flow of time". This idea is illustrated in experiments performed with plasmonic hyperbolic metamaterials. Appearance of the "statistical arrow of time" is examined in an experimental scenario which emulates a Big Bang-like event.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, this version is accepted for publication in JOSA

From Isovist to Spatial Perception: Wayfinding in Historic Quarter

Based on the assumption that human behaviours are mainly affected by physical and animate environments, this empirical research takes the changeful and complex historical district in Tainan to observe wayfinding behaviours. An a priori analysis of the isovist fields is conducted to identify spatial characteristics. Three measures, the relative area, convexity, and circularity, are applied to scrutinize the possible stopping points, change of speed, and route choices. Accordingly, an experiment is carried out to observe spatial behaviours and different influences of social stimuli. Results show that social interactions afford groups and pairs to perform better than individual observers in wayfinding.© 2016. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creative commons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.Keywords: wayfinding; isovist; spatial perception and social stimuli; historic quarte

The Relationships between Peer- and Self-Assessment and Teacher Assessment of Young EFL Learners’ Oral Presentations

A uncorrected proof of the manuscript is released here according to Springer author agreement.As the traditional grammar translation approach is being gradually replaced by communicative or task-based approaches, paper-and-pencil tests, commonly used in English classes in Taiwan, do not meet the course goals. Alternative assessment, known for increasing learners’ cognitive and meta-cognitive development as well as empowering students to take ownership of their learning, has been practiced extensively in L1 higher education, but neglected in L2 elementary schools. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate how peer and self-assessment can be implemented to evaluate young EFL learners’ oral presentation and how the students perceive this experience. The study was conducted in two sixth grade classes at a public elementary school in southern Taiwan. After attending a professional development workshop held by the government, a local English teacher practiced peer and self-assessment in her class so as to engage every student in class activities and also to provide an opportunity for them to reflect upon their performance. In the process, the students formed groups of six to discuss and give grades after each individual student’s oral report. Three types of data sources were analyzed. The first was the evaluation rubrics from peer groups, each presenting students, and the teacher. Then, a survey, containing 16 closed-format questions and one open-ended question, was administered to elicit the students’ perceptions of the assessment process. Also, an interview was done with the teacher. The results show that peer and teacher assessment had strong positive correlation, whereas self- and teacher assessment were moderately correlated. The strength of correlation also varied for each evaluation criterion. Though learners responded positively to the assessing experiences in the questionnaires, they expressed concern that some grades assigned by peers were not fair and a few group members dominated the grading process. The findings shed light on benefits of combining peer and self- assessment and suggest training should emphasize self-assessment, evaluation criteria related to content of the presentation, and students’ social skills to work harmoniously in groups. Most of all, students’ traditional way of learning should not be neglected

Surface plasmon dielectric waveguides

We demonstrate that surface plasmon polaritons can be guided by nanometer scale dielectric waveguides. In a test experiment plasmons were coupled to a curved 3 micrometer radius dielectric stripe, which was 200 nm wide and 138 nm thick using a parabolic surface coupler. This experiment demonstrates that using surface plasmon polaritons the scale of optoelectronic devices based on dielectric waveguides can be shrunk by at least an order of magnitude.Comment: 10 pages, 3 fig

Building Identification to Co-Create Supply Chain Innovation

Supply chain identification is a process of self-categorization which can encourage firms to make more efforts to achieve supply chain goals. It is important for firms to co-create value with customers/suppliers while pursuing supply chain innovation. However, few studies have investigated identification issues from the business-to-business aspects. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the identification generation among supply chain members, especially focus on the exchange mechanisms of identification. Based on these mechanisms, we develop a research model to explain the influences of the exchange mechanisms on information sharing and supply chain innovation. This empirical study investigates the top 1000 Taiwanese manufacturers issued by Commonwealth magazine of Taiwan in 2012. The results show: (1) The exchange mechanisms, including trust, commitment, communication, and reciprocal relationship have significant effects on information sharing. (2) Information sharing in the value co-creating process has a significant effect on supply chain innovation. Implications are provided based on the results

Speech Enhancement Guided by Contextual Articulatory Information

Previous studies have confirmed the effectiveness of leveraging articulatory information to attain improved speech enhancement (SE) performance. By augmenting the original acoustic features with the place/manner of articulatory features, the SE process can be guided to consider the articulatory properties of the input speech when performing enhancement. Hence, we believe that the contextual information of articulatory attributes should include useful information and can further benefit SE in different languages. In this study, we propose an SE system that improves its performance through optimizing the contextual articulatory information in enhanced speech for both English and Mandarin. We optimize the contextual articulatory information through joint-train the SE model with an end-to-end automatic speech recognition (E2E ASR) model, predicting the sequence of broad phone classes (BPC) instead of the word sequences. Meanwhile, two training strategies are developed to train the SE system based on the BPC-based ASR: multitask-learning and deep-feature training strategies. Experimental results on the TIMIT and TMHINT dataset confirm that the contextual articulatory information facilitates an SE system in achieving better results than the traditional Acoustic Model(AM). Moreover, in contrast to another SE system that is trained with monophonic ASR, the BPC-based ASR (providing contextual articulatory information) can improve the SE performance more effectively under different signal-to-noise ratios(SNR).Comment: Will be submitted to TASL