Participation Cost Estimation: Private Versus Non-Private Study

In our study, we seek to learn the real-time crowd levels at popular points of interests based on users continually sharing their location data. We evaluate the benefits of users sharing their location data privately and non-privately, and show that suitable privacy-preserving mechanisms provide incentives for user participation in a private study as compared to a non-private study

Professional competencies of architecture graduates: perceptions from graduates, academics and employers in the Nigerian construction industry / Joy Joshua Maina.

The clamour for better quality graduates by architects in the Nigerian Construction Industry (NCI) necessitates a look into the core competencies and the adequacy of architecture education in preparing architecture graduates for professional practice. 116 self-report likertscale questionnaires from architecture graduates (2009-2015), academics and employers were analysed to establish core competencies developed by the graduates while in school. Descriptive statistics, t-tests as well as Mann-Whitney tests for differences in ratings were employed for the study. Results reveal the perceived adequacy of architecture education for the future career of graduates from the academic perspective. Graduates were most proficient at design related competencies while AutoCAD was still considered the most important CAD competency for architecture graduates in the NCI. The study recommends more frequent evaluations of competencies for employability in collaboration with industry as well as embracing BIM related software in line with global best practices

Architecture curriculum on final year students' design: do gender and mode of entry matter?

Curriculum evaluation being fundamental to sustenance of quality standards of education, this study presents an evaluation of the architecture curriculum, not reviewed since its implementation in 2012 at Ahmadu Bello University Zaria. Specifically, the paper presents the student perspective regarding the impact of courses on design, employing Likert scale ratings of the courses in the new curriculum. Results were analyzed using SPSS v.21 for descriptive statistics as well as Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests for differences in course ratings along two variables, gender and mode of entry. Results reveal that practical courses such as SIWES, Building Construction, CAAD, Sustainability and Architecture, amongst fourteen courses, highly impact design in the final year class. Overall, departmental electives (M 3.71) were rated more highly than theoretical cognate courses (M 3.61) designed to complement core courses (M 4.34) in the architectural curriculum. Additionally, gender and mode of entry on average had no significant influence on ratings of courses highly impacting design. The study recommends frequent evaluations, reduction on credit hours for the final year class, a paradigm shift from traditional teaching styles to outcome-based educational systems, attracting funding for practical site visits, encouraging students to become proactive learners as well as boosting female students' morale towards design and creative programs.Keywords: Architecture, Curriculum, Design, Gender, Mode of Entr

Factors Influencing Transformation of Prototype Public Housing in Northern Nigeria

This paper explored factors influencing transformation and their relationship to residential satisfaction within prototype public housing in northern Nigeria as such studies are rare. Transformation increases and improves existing housing stocks in order to address acute housing deficits but exerts enormous pressure on urban infrastructure notably electricity and water supply, waste disposal, drainage and road networks. The study employed mixed methods through observations of transformations within three prototype public estates in Abuja, Sokoto and Potiskum as well as a survey regarding reasons residents transform their houses. Data from 73 respondents were analysed using descriptive statistics and Principal Components Analyses (PCA). Results revealed that the houses were largely allocated to civil servants within the middle to high-income bracket on owner-occupier basis and rarely to the low-income group. Mean satisfaction of 2.99 illustrates that residents were generally dissatisfied with the condition of their dwellings. Transformations were influenced by spatial, structural psychological and institutional factors as the lack of satisfaction with dwelling unit design; increasing housing stock, maintenance, privacy and services; increasing interior/sleeping spaces as well as the need for personalisation most influenced transformations. The latter largely accrued from implementing an owner-occupier policy of housing allocation. Economic reasons and home-based enterprises exerted the least influence on transformations. The implication on practice is that allocation strategies affect transformations within prototype housing thus designs need to be flexible to accommodate inevitable transformations. Public procurement processes also require urgent attention to address the low quality of construction and material finishes within prototype public housing in northern Nigeria. Planning policies will also need to factor in more economic related communal facilities around streets and markets as economic activities were observed to largely occur outside housing units. Urban policy will also benefit from similar studies of transformation within private housing as these constitute the bulk of housing supply in the country

Socioeconomic and Demographic Predictors of Residential Satisfaction within Public Housing Estates in Northern Nigeria

This study examined relationships between residential satisfaction, socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of residents to address the dearth of user input proffered as a major reason for failure of public housing delivery in Nigeria. Results from a survey of 178 respondents across eight selected public housing estates in Northern Nigeria analysed in SPSS v.24 through descriptive statistics, Pearson chisquare correlations and logistic regression reveal that length of stay (p=0.001) and marital status (p=0.006) significantly associate with residential satisfaction. Monthly income, length of stay and marital status emerged as significant predictors of residential satisfaction (p<0.05). The odds of residential satisfaction increasing is higher among residents who earn monthly incomes above 100,000 NGN (OR=2.422), have lived within the estates for more than 10 years (OR=2.288), accommodate household sizes of 4-6 persons (OR=1.279) within units containing more than 3 bedrooms (OR=1.346) which are owner-occupied (OR=1.118). Contrarily, residential satisfaction decreases if respondents are male, married, aged 30 years and above with large families of more than six persons. The study concludes that demographic profiling of residents is useful in the planning of future public housing developments and projections of support infrastructure. Consequently, updated employee databases ought to be a priority especially in government ministries, departments and agencies. Policies of providing 2-3 bedroom units also require revision as well as flexible plans, which allow for extensions to houses especially increasing the number of bedrooms by residents in future

A New Approach to Coding in Content Based MANETs

In content-based mobile ad hoc networks (CB-MANETs), random linear network coding (NC) can be used to reliably disseminate large files under intermittent connectivity. Conventional NC involves random unrestricted coding at intermediate nodes. This however is vulnerable to pollution attacks. To avoid attacks, a brute force approach is to restrict the mixing at the source. However, source restricted NC generally reduces the robustness of the code in the face of errors, losses and mobility induced intermittence. CB-MANETs introduce a new option. Caching is common in CB MANETs and a fully reassembled cached file can be viewed as a new source. Thus, NC packets can be mixed at all sources (including the originator and the intermediate caches) yet still providing protection from pollution. The hypothesis we wish to test in this paper is whether in CB-MANETs with sufficient caches of a file, the performance (in terms of robustness) of the restricted coding equals that of unrestricted coding. In this paper, we examine and compare unrestricted coding to full cache coding, source only coding, and no coding. As expected, we find that full cache coding remains competitive with unrestricted coding while maintaining full protection against pollution attacks