Flexible platform for online laboratory experiments in electrical engineering

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 81-83).This thesis describes a project that is part of the collaboration between MIT and universities in sub-Sahara Africa to exploit the value of iLabs in the developing world. The main goal of this project is to develop software that will exploit the value of the National Instruments Educational Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Suite (ELVIS) system in Africa by integrating it into the iLabs shared architecture, while taking into consideration the special circumstances surrounding the deployment of iLabs in Africa such as bandwidth limitations, limited access to networked computers and lack of computer skills on the part of students. Integrating ELVIS into iLabs will facilitate the rapid deployment of new online labs to augment the Physics and Electrical engineering curricula in these universities. iLab development efforts for this project are being done in parallel with developers at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) in Nigeria. One of the main goals of the new system is to fill the gap of laboratory experiences in introductory level electronics and physics classes, which are hardest hit by the lack of equipment due to their typically large enrollment. Our goal is to support the development of electronic circuit building skills by providing an environment where students can easily try different circuit configurations before submitting experiments for execution. We are therefore investigating new iLab client user interface designs that will enable students to create and edit circuit schematics from provided electronic components. Our ELVIS iLab design will also formalize and simplify the process of creating and administering such labs for instructors, thereby speeding up the deployment of new labs in an environment where software development skills are not at a premium.(cont.) This will be achieved by recycling many of the components that are currently behind the success of the microelectronics weblab, which have already been adapted before for new iLabs. Besides reusing existing software, the project hopes to make a major contribution towards enhancing students experiences with iLabs through its new interactive client design.by Samuel Gikandi.M.Eng

Collaborative development of remote electronics laboratories in the ELVIS ilab

Remote laboratories represent a significant value to engineering curricula in a variety of cases. Whether it is a complement to a hands-on experience or a substitute when a traditional lab is not feasible, remote laboratories can be a valuable educational resource. Since 1998, the MIT iLab Project has worked to increase the quality and availability of remote laboratories. Using the iLab Shared Architecture, developers of new labs can leverage a set of generic support functions and then share those labs easily and with minimal administrative cost. More recently, the iLab Project, in partnership with Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria, Makerere University in Uganda and the University of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania and in coordination with the Maricopa Advanced Technology Education Center (MATEC), has focused on building iLabs around the National Instruments Educational Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Suite (ELVIS) platform. The ELVIS is a low-cost, small-footprint unit that contains most of the common test instruments found in a typical electrical engineering lab. By coupling the ELVIS with iLabs, a variety of remote electronics laboratories can be built and shared around the world. Using this common hardware/software platform, participants in the iLab Project at different levels of the educational spectrum have developed experiments that meet their individual curricular needs and are able to host them for use by other peer institutions. Not only does this increase the variety of ELVISbased iLabs, but it also spurs the creation of teams that can then build other, more diverse iLabs and substantively participate in project-wide collaborative development efforts. Through such coordinated efforts, iLabs can provide rich practical experiences for studentsMaricopa County Community College District. Maricopa Advanced Technology Education CenterCarnegie Corporation of New YorkMicrosoft CorporationNational Science Foundation (U.S.) (award 0702735)Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology Cente

'Vernacular Voices: Black British Poetry'

ABSTRACT Black British poetry is the province of experimenting with voice and recording rhythms beyond the iambic pentameter. Not only in performance poetry and through the spoken word, but also on the page, black British poetry constitutes and preserves a sound archive of distinct linguistic varieties. In Slave Song (1984) and Coolie Odyssey (1988), David Dabydeen employs a form of Guyanese Creole in order to linguistically render and thus commemorate the experience of slaves and indentured labourers, respectively, with the earlier collection providing annotated translations into Standard English. James Berry, Louise Bennett, and Valerie Bloom adapt Jamaican Patois to celebrate Jamaican folk culture and at times to represent and record experiences and linguistic interactions in the postcolonial metropolis. Grace Nichols and John Agard use modified forms of Guyanese Creole, with Nichols frequently constructing gendered voices whilst Agard often celebrates linguistic playfulness. The borders between linguistic varieties are by no means absolute or static, as the emergence and marked growth of ‘London Jamaican’ (Mark Sebba) indicates. Asian British writer Daljit Nagra takes liberties with English for different reasons. Rather than having recourse to established Creole languages, and blending them with Standard English, his heteroglot poems frequently emulate ‘Punglish’, the English of migrants whose first language is Punjabi. Whilst it is the language prestige of London Jamaican that has been significantly enhanced since the 1990s, a fact not only confirmed by linguistic research but also by its transethnic uses both in the streets and on the page, Nagra’s substantial success and the mainstream attention he receives also indicate the clout of vernacular voices in poetry. They have the potential to connect with oral traditions and cultural memories, to record linguistic varieties, and to endow ‘street cred’ to authors and texts. In this chapter, these double-voiced poetic languages are also read as signs of resistance against residual monologic ideologies of Englishness. © Book proposal (02/2016): The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing p. 27 of 4

Forging connections: anthologies, arts collectives, and the politics of inclusion

The changing social and political landscape of twentieth-century Britain catalysed a remarkable rise in collaborative activity by artists and activists of black and Asian heritage. Creative communities began to gather in both local and regional contexts, with the aim of sharing resources and securing an audience. This chapter records some of these many activities, tracing the groups’ genesis, manifest objectives, and key contributions. It argues that anthologising should be understood as a specifically motivated activity. Literary anthologies of poetry and fiction served to showcase the diversity of contemporary writing, while also suggesting its coherence. Drawing on the concept of “strategic essentialism” elucidated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, I show that the anthology acts to ensure the visibility of a group, bannered as a unified and singly-titled selection of texts, while also insisting on the differences within: the heterogeneous multiplicity of black and Asian British experiences and creative practices

'Voyaging in': colonialism and migration

A major reference chapter on the history of the literature of colonialism and migration 1945-70. The book marks an intervention into conventional histories of British Literature. The chapter illustrates and analyses the influential formation of alternative modernities by migrant writers resident in Britain during this period; it also extends the gaze to the period before 1945 earlier in the twentieth century. Maps new ways of reading literary history; broad and wideranging discussion of migration during this period

Reservoir quality of Cenozoic carbonate buildups and coral reef terraces

Almost half of SE Asia's considerable hydrocarbon reserves are contained in carbonates. The majority of these reservoirs are Miocene buildups up to tens of kilometres across. However, with the exception of a few fields, there is little detailed data on how local depositional and diagenetic conditions influence the considerable heterogeneities in reservoir quality often encountered. This study focuses on factors influencing the facies, diagenetic and reservoir variability of comparable Modern, Quaternary and Neogene reef associated deposits from the Tukang Besi Archipelago, Central Indonesia.The Archipelago includes large atolls, a number of smaller buildups and 4 main islands each with modern rimmed shelves or fringing reefs. On the islands, over ten late Neogene and Quaternary coral reef terraces have been uplifted to maximum heights of ~300 m. Analysis of the modern deposits allows initial reservoir potential to be assessed and related to local environmental conditions. The influence of diagenesis on final reservoir quality is evaluated for the depositional facies exposed in the uplifted terraces. The overall spatial distribution of effective porosity across the area is strongly dependent on local energy conditions, water depth, carbonate producers, size of atolls or islands, climate and local meteoric diagenetic processes. This evaluation of spatial variability in carbonate reservoir characteristics provides much needed analogue data as the hydrocarbon industry focuses on improving recovery from existing fields and exploring for new reserves