Funds Of Knowledge Of Arab Immigrant Families: An Examination Of The Perceptions Of High School Students, Parents, And Teachers

With the growing numbers of English learners in American schools, the Federal Government has mandated special services and programs to meet the needs of this population which increased research about the best strategies that would help close the gap between ELs and their peers. Nonetheless, the current education system still views ELs from a deficit lens which focuses on closing the gaps in students’ education instead of focusing on the assets that they have. Therefore, there is a specific need to bridge the home and school environments together so that teachers can build on the skills that students bring from home to teach them. The purpose of this study was to look at the home literacy practices of Arab immigrant families to determine the capital embedded in Arab immigrant students’ daily routines and skills. By examining the perceptions of the concerned people: students, parents, and teachers about the home literacy practices of Arab immigrant students, the study reveals the daily literacy routines and assets that students have. In addition, the study sheds light on the formations of students’ positional, social, and cultural identities

L-header Testing, Evaluation and Design Methodology

Cold-formed steel L-shaped headers have gained popularity over the past few years due to their simplicity and cost effectiveness. While cold-formed steel conventional headers are widely used and can be designed for most applications, often it is necessary to reduce cost by using less material and labor hours. The L-shaped header provides both, a fast and economical solution to safely transfer applied loads to other structural elements in a building. As the name suggests, the main components of an L-shaped header is a piece of cold-formed steel formed into a shape resembling the letter L. An L-header assembly consists of a cold-formed steel angle with one short leg lapping over the top track and one long leg extending down the side of the wall above openings. The current design equations in the AlSI Specification do not provide a reasonable design values for L-header assemblies. Testing of the assemblies was necessary to develop an easy to use design equations that can be used by designers. A total of 71 gravity tests and 38 uplift tests of L-header assemblies having variable sizes and thicknesses and spans were conducted at the NAHB Research Center. Results of the tests as well as a proposed design procedure is presented here

Smooth Number Message Authentication Code in the IoT Landscape

This paper presents the Smooth Number Message Authentication Code (SNMAC) for the context of lightweight IoT devices. The proposal is based on the use of smooth numbers in the field of cryptography, and investigates how one can use them to improve the security and performance of various algorithms or security constructs. The literature findings suggest that current IoT solutions are viable and promising, yet they should explore the potential usage of smooth numbers. The methodology involves several processes, including the design, implementation, and results evaluation. After introducing the algorithm, provides a detailed account of the experimental performance analysis of the SNMAC solution, showcasing its efficiency in real-world scenarios. Furthermore, the paper also explores the security aspects of the proposed SNMAC algorithm, offering valuable insights into its robustness and applicability for ensuring secure communication within IoT environments.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figure

Urban bus positioning: Location based services and high level system architecture

Today’s urban transport systems are dominated by private vehicles, which are significant contributors to traffic congestion and pollution. This is expected to increase as the urban population grows, predicted to account for about 68% of the world’s population by 2050. In comparison to private cars, transport systems dominated by buses produce lower traffic congestion and emissions. Therefore, improvements in bus operation activities most of which require information on bus location (i.e. location based services) should facilitate urban transport sustainability. However, to date there is no agreement globally on the location based services, their location requirements and technologies to deliver significant improvement in bus operations. Therefore, this paper creates for the first time, a comprehensive list of bus operation services and specifies the performance requirements. These are considered together with challenging spatio-temporal characteristics of the urban environment to specify a high-level location determination system architecture for urban bus operations. The services, their requirements, standards and positioning system architecture are essential for the formulation of appropriate policies, regulation, service provision, and development and procurement of urban bus positioning systems

Human-Robot Interaction using VAHR: Virtual Assistant, Human, and Robots in the Loop

Robots have become ubiquitous tools in various industries and households, highlighting the importance of human-robot interaction (HRI). This has increased the need for easy and accessible communication between humans and robots. Recent research has focused on the intersection of virtual assistant technology, such as Amazon's Alexa, with robots and its effect on HRI. This paper presents the Virtual Assistant, Human, and Robots in the loop (VAHR) system, which utilizes bidirectional communication to control multiple robots through Alexa. VAHR's performance was evaluated through a human-subjects experiment, comparing objective and subjective metrics of traditional keyboard and mouse interfaces to VAHR. The results showed that VAHR required 41% less Robot Attention Demand and ensured 91% more Fan-out time compared to the standard method. Additionally, VAHR led to a 62.5% improvement in multi-tasking, highlighting the potential for efficient human-robot interaction in physically- and mentally-demanding scenarios. However, subjective metrics revealed a need for human operators to build confidence and trust with this new method of operation.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure

Dynamic Optimized Bandwidth Management for Teleoperation of Collaborative Robots

A real-time dynamic and optimized bandwidth management algorithm is proposed and used in teleoperated collaborative swarms of robots. This method is effective in complex teleoperation tasks, where several robots rather than one are utilized and where an extensive amount of exchanged information between operators and robots is inevitable. The importance of the proposed algorithm is that it accounts for Interesting Events (IEs) occurring in the system\u27s environment and for the change in the Quality of Collaboration (QoC) of the swarm of robots in order to allocate communication bandwidth in an optimized manner. A general dynamic optimized bandwidth management system for teleoperation of collaborative robots is formulated in this paper. The suggested algorithm is evaluated against two static algorithms applied to a swarm of two humanoid robots. The results demonstrate the advantages of dynamic optimization algorithm in terms of task and network performance. The developed algorithm outperforms two static bandwidth management algorithms, against which it was tested, for all performance parameters in 80% of the performed trials. Accordingly, it was demonstrated that the proposed dynamic bandwidth optimization and allocation algorithm forms the basis of a framework for algorithms applied to real-time highly complex systems

Tackling the COVID-19 infodemic among Syrian refugees in Lebanon:Development and evaluation of the "Wikaytek" tool

OBJECTIVE: The COVID-19 infodemic has been a global public health challenge, especially affecting vulnerable populations such as Syrian refugees with limited internet access and functional, health, digital, and media literacies. To address this problem, we developed Wikaytek, a software to diffuse reliable COVID-19 information using WhatsApp, the preferred communication channel among Syrian refugees. In this paper, we describe the systematic development of the tool. METHODS: We undertook a pilot study guided by the Humanitarian Engineering Initiative (HEI)'s user-centered design framework, comprising five stages: (a) user research, including needs assessment and desk review of interventions with target users; (b) concept design based on platform and source selection, message format, concept testing, and architecture design; (c) prototyping and implementation, encompassing software development and system operation; (d) user testing (alpha and beta); and (e) evaluation through software analytics and user interviews. We reported a qualitative process evaluation.RESULTS: Wikaytek scrapes validated and reliable COVID-19-related information from reputable sources on Twitter, automatically translates it into Arabic, attaches relevant media (images/video), and generates an audio format using Google text-to-speech. Then, messages are broadcast to WhatsApp. Our evaluation shows that users appreciate receiving "push" information from reliable sources they can trust and prefer the audio format over text. CONCLUSIONS: Wikaytek is a useful and well-received software for diffusing credible information on COVID-19 among Syrian refugees with limited literacy, as it complements the texts with audio messages. The tool can be adapted to diffuse messages about other public health issues among vulnerable communities, extending its scope and reach in humanitarian settings. </p

Directing and orienting ICT healthcare solutions to address the needs of the aging population

Background: With an aging population, it is essential to maintain good health and autonomy for as long as possible. Instead of hospitalisation or institutionalisation, older people with chronic conditions can be assisted in their own home with numerous “smart” devices that support them in their activities of daily living, manage their medical conditions, and prevent fall incidents. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions facilitate the monitoring and management of older people’s health to improve quality of life and physical activity with a decline in caregivers’ burden. Method: The aim of this paper was to conduct a systematic literature review to analyse the state of the art of ICT solutions for older people with chronic conditions, and the impact of these solutions on their quality of life from a biomedical perspective. Results: By analysing the literature on the available ICT proposals, it is shown that different approaches have been deployed by noticing that the more cross-interventions are merged then the better the results are, but there is still no evidence of the effects of ICT solutions on older people’s health outcomes. Furthermore, there are still unresolved ethical and legal issues. Conclusion: While there has been much research and development in healthcare ICT solutions for the aging population, ICT solutions still need significant development in order to be user-oriented, affordable, and to manage chronic conditions in the aging wider population