A flipped classroom approach to teaching oral pathology using virtual microscopy - the Glasgow experience

This paper describes a student-centred, integrated teaching model in which oral pathology and oral medicine staff members jointly deliver tutorials in a combined online and face-to-face format. Students are provided with clinical and histopathological information, which they must review and use to answer questions via a Virtual Learning Environment before the tutorial takes place. By reviewing the students’ answers online before the teaching session, staff can focus the tutorial itself on resolving knowledge gaps and afterwards post a set of gold standard answers online for students to reflect upon. CPD/Clinical Relevance: This article illustrates a combination of teaching methods and modern technologies which integrate clinical with laboratory sciences and enhance the access of students to histopathological materials without the need for access to a traditional microscopy facility

On the Performance of the Relay-ARQ Networks

This paper investigates the performance of relay networks in the presence of hybrid automatic repeat request (ARQ) feedback and adaptive power allocation. The throughput and the outage probability of different hybrid ARQ protocols are studied for independent and spatially-correlated fading channels. The results are obtained for the cases where there is a sum power constraint on the source and the relay or when each of the source and the relay are power-limited individually. With adaptive power allocation, the results demonstrate the efficiency of relay-ARQ techniques in different conditions.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. 201

BBC Arabic TV Service and the Lebanese Audience(s): Can They Engage with Each Other?

Foreign Arabic speaking channels exist for a reason: to influence. The birth of these channels has been in reaction to political developments which press the nations they are attached to, to speak to foreign audiences. They form one of the most reliable tools for a country’s practice of soft power. BBC Arabic service is no exception. The urge to speak to Arab audiences was related to the high rivalry that the service faced from other pan-Arab channels. Within this context, this study investigates the relationship between BBC Arabic TV and the Lebanese audiences by exploring how BBC Arabic service and the audiences see, perceive and understand each other. The research studies the Arabic service from a political and economic perspective to understand how its milieu impact and influence its relationship with the British establishment as well as the audiences. In addition, critical discourse analysis is used to explore the discursive language BBCATV uses in speaking to audiences by analyzing four BBCATV produced documentaries. This research also studies the Lebanese audiences to understand if what BBCATV offers resonate with their needs, how they see BBCATV, what they expect of it and how they think it sees them. The fieldwork of this study takes place in Lebanon and among the young and educated whom the channel aims to address. The data was obtained through doing focus groups where participants watched and discussed the four documentaries. The results show that BBCA is governed by its milieu and that it still speaks to the audiences as if it is isolated and in need of BBCA to educate and inform them. The findings from the Lebanese audience’s data showed that they have a lack of trust of BBCATV because of its identity as a British organization; they expect media to engage in their societies’ causes therefore they feel detached from BBCATV. The findings also showed that the Lebanese audiences are diverse and have different needs, different expectations of BBCATV and different interpretations to how BBCATV sees them. To conclude, the study shows that Arab audience is in fact audience(s) which is seen, understood and addressed by BBCATV as one lump and which stems from an imperialist perception of the Arab world as one which needs change and modernization according to the western model whether in values or politics

Green communication via Type-I ARQ: Finite block-length analysis

This paper studies the effect of optimal power allocation on the performance of communication systems utilizing automatic repeat request (ARQ). Considering Type-I ARQ, the problem is cast as the minimization of the outage probability subject to an average power constraint. The analysis is based on some recent results on the achievable rates of finite-length codes and we investigate the effect of codewords length on the performance of ARQ-based systems. We show that the performance of ARQ protocols is (almost) insensitive to the length of the codewords, for codewords of length $\ge 50$ channel uses. Also, optimal power allocation improves the power efficiency of the ARQ-based systems substantially. For instance, consider a Rayleigh fading channel, codewords of rate 1 nats-per-channel-use and outage probability $10^{-3}.$ Then, with a maximum of 2 and 3 transmissions, the implementation of power-adaptive ARQ reduces the average power, compared to the open-loop communication setup, by 17 and 23 dB, respectively, a result which is (almost) independent of the codewords length. Also, optimal power allocation increases the diversity gain of the ARQ protocols considerably.Comment: Accepted for publication in GLOBECOM 201

A Genetic Algorithm-based Beamforming Approach for Delay-constrained Networks

In this paper, we study the performance of initial access beamforming schemes in the cases with large but finite number of transmit antennas and users. Particularly, we develop an efficient beamforming scheme using genetic algorithms. Moreover, taking the millimeter wave communication characteristics and different metrics into account, we investigate the effect of various parameters such as number of antennas/receivers, beamforming resolution as well as hardware impairments on the system performance. As shown, our proposed algorithm is generic in the sense that it can be effectively applied with different channel models, metrics and beamforming methods. Also, our results indicate that the proposed scheme can reach (almost) the same end-to-end throughput as the exhaustive search-based optimal approach with considerably less implementation complexity

Reinforcement-based data transmission in temporally-correlated fading channels: Partial CSIT scenario

Reinforcement algorithms refer to the schemes where the results of the previous trials and a reward-punishment rule are used for parameter setting in the next steps. In this paper, we use the concept of reinforcement algorithms to develop different data transmission models in wireless networks. Considering temporally-correlated fading channels, the results are presented for the cases with partial channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT). As demonstrated, the implementation of reinforcement algorithms improves the performance of communication setups remarkably, with the same feedback load/complexity as in the state-of-the-art schemes.Comment: Accepted for publication in ISWCS 201

ASYMMETRIC INFORMATION IN COTTON INSURANCE MARKETS: EVIDENCE FROM TEXAS

In recent years, the crop insurance program has emerged as an important part of the U.S. farm policy. Farmers responded to the crop insurance program with increased participation nationwide. At issue is whether the rapid expansion of the program has worsened the asymmetric information problems in crop insurance markets. This paper investigates the presence of adverse selection in cotton insurance markets. Our results reject the conditional independence of the choice of insurance contracts and risk of loss, implying the presence of informational asymmetries between the insurer and insured in Texas cotton insurance markets. Results show that actual premium rates are significantly different from both pure and fair premium rates.Risk and Uncertainty,