A project based approach to learning for first year engineering students

Support for transition from Leaving Certificate and entry to college for 1st year engineering students can be difficult to achieve. This new course offers an innovative project based approach to learning for 1st years with an introduction to design to build confidence in student ability and give motivation in research and discovery skills. The project takes place in small groups and relies heavily on presentation, group and individual skills. The Mechanical and Manufacturing and the Electronic Engineering Schools at Dublin City University offered this new module for all first year Engineering Students in 2006. The course entitled, ‘Project and Laboratory Skills’ was an immediate success with increased participation and retention rates and a high level of academic success in assessment. This paper highlights the overall module concepts, teaching and learning outcomes and the resources required for such a module

The Irish Rural Environmental Protection Scheme and lack of Strategic Environmental Assessment

working paperProposals specifically aimed at delivering environmental benefits are often exempt from assessment, despite evidence that they can be poorly thought-through and sometimes counterproductive. This is doubly true of agri-environmental schemes where local farm-scale actions are expected to generate large-area cumulative effects on soil and water quality, biodiversity or landscape. There is evidence that the benefits of such schemes have often been assumed rather than planned for, thus necessitating ex-post assessment to justify their continuance

Projective rectification from the fundamental matrix

This paper describes a direct, self-contained method for planar image rectification of stereo pairs. The method is based solely on an examination of the Fundamental matrix, where an improved method is given for the derivation of two projective transformations that horizontally align all the epipolar projections. A novel approach is proposed to uniquely optimise each transform in order to minimise perspective distortions. This ensures the rectified images resemble the original images as closely as possible. Detailed results show that the rectification precision exactly matches the estimation error of the Fundamental matrix. In tests the remaining perspective distortion offers on average less than one percent viewpoint distortion. Both these factors offer superior robustness and performance compared with existing techniques

Calibration and removal of lateral chromatic aberration in images

This paper addresses the problem of compensating for lateral chromatic aberration in digital images through colour plane realignment. Two main contributions are made: the derivation of a model for lateral chromatic aberration in images, and the subsequent calibration of this model from a single view of a chess pattern. These advances lead to a practical and accurate alternative for the compensation of lateral chromatic aberrations. Experimental results validate the proposed models and calibration algorithm. The effects of colour channel correlations resulting from the camera colour filter array interpolation is examined and found to have a negligible magnitude relative to the chromatic aberration. Results with real data show how the removal of lateral chromatic aberration significantly improves the colour quality of the image

Consideration of landscape in the framework documentation during the evolution of the Rural Environment Protection Scheme (REPS) in the Republic of Ireland.

working paperThis paper looks at the changing concept of landscape during the evolution of REPS. It reviews and groups definitions of landscape and identifies their agri-environmental relevance. Descriptions were devised to amplify each grouping with reference to an Irish context and were used as an analytical framework to categorise each landscape reference in REPS documentation. There was an increase in the use of the term landscape with each version of the scheme and expansion in the range of different landscape categories to which this apparently applied. However there has been no coherence in its use. This paper makes recommendations to improve the framework for the treatment of landscape issues in REPS and its future evolution

Constraining star formation rates in cool-core brightest cluster galaxies

We used broad-band imaging data for 10 cool-core brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) and conducted a Bayesian analysis using stellar population synthesis to determine the likely properties of the constituent stellar populations. Determination of ongoing star formation rates (SFRs), in particular, has a direct impact on our understanding of the cooling of the intracluster medium (ICM), star formation and AGN-regulated feedback. Our model consists of an old stellar population and a series of young stellar components. We calculated marginalized posterior probability distributions for various model parameters and obtained 68% plausible intervals from them. The 68% plausible interval on the SFRs is broad, owing to a wide range of models that are capable of fitting the data, which also explains the wide dispersion in the star formation rates available in the literature. The ranges of possible SFRs are robust and highlight the strength in such a Bayesian analysis. The SFRs are correlated with the X-ray mass deposition rates (the former are factors of 4 to 50 lower than the latter), implying a picture where the cooling of the ICM is a contributing factor to star formation in cool-core BCGs. We find that 9 out of 10 BCGs have been experiencing starbursts since 6 Gyr ago. While four out of 9 BCGs seem to require continuous SFRs, 5 out of 9 seem to require periodic star formation on intervals ranging from 20 Myr to 200 Myr. This time scale is similar to the cooling-time of the ICM in the central (< 5 kpc) regions.Comment: 33 pages, 14 Figures, 14 Tables. Accepted for publication in MNRA