Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ICT Integration In Education: Incorporation for Teaching & Learning Improvement

Over the last two decades, the rapid growth of ICT has become one of the most important topics discussed by the scholars in education. This is due to the capability of ICT in providing a dynamic and proactive teaching and learning environment. In line with the current digital era, teachers are required to integrate ICT in their daily teaching and replace their traditional methods with modern tools and facilities. The main focus of this paper is on effectiveness of ICT integration in education. More specifically, this paper aims at identifying the level of computer skills and knowledge of primary school teachers in the teaching and learning process. Moreover, the objective of this paper is to identify the level of ICT integration in teaching and learning process in classroom by primary school teachers. A total of 61 teachers from 10 public primary schools in Klang Valley, Malaysia have been selected randomly to complete this quantitative study’s survey questionnaire. The findings illuminate that most of the teachers are normal users, and many teachers more frequently use ICT in the teachers’ room for their work rather than using it in their classroom for teaching and learning. Moreover, results show that teachers should always be ready and well-equipped in terms of ICT competencies and positive attitude to provide ICT-based learning opportunities for students to improve their learning quality. Future studies need to consider other aspects of ICT integration specially from the management point of view such as strategic planning and policy making
Evolutionary Video Processing for Lip Tracking

In this paper, real-time tracking and information acquisition of lip region of a person during speech in active video scenes are addressed. The lip is deformed by speech, and the size and orientation are changed by camera motion. The difficulty is mainly due to change of these appearances of the lip. We use template matching with a genetic algorithm to overcome these problems. A high speed and accurate tracking scheme using Evolutionary Video Processing is proposed. Usually, a genetic algorithm is unsuitable for a real-time processing, however, we achieved real-time processing. In our simulations, a tracking accuracy of 91.6% and an average processing time of 26.0 milliseconds per frame are achieved.
A Step-by-Step Approach to Using the SAS System for Factor Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling

From the Publisher: Packed with concrete examples, Hatcher's book provides an introduction to more advanced statistical procedures and includes handy appendices that give basic instruction in using SAS. Novice SAS users will find all they need to master SAS basics and to move into advanced statistical analyses in this one book. Featured is a simple, step-by-step approach to testing structural equation models with latent variables using the CALIS procedure. The following topics are explained in easy-to-understand terms: exploratory factor analysis, principal component analysis, and developing measurement models with confirmatory factor analysis. Other covered topics of note include "LISREL-type" analyses with the user-friendly PROC CALIS and solving problems encountered in real-world social science research. Supports releases 6.09 and higher of SAS software. Author Biography: Larry Hatcher, Ph.D. Larry Hatcher, associate professor of psychology at Winthrop University and a SAS user for nearly 15 years, offers you the benefit of his experience as both a researcher and a teacher of statistics using the SAS System.
Adaptive stimulus artifact cancellation in gastric myoelectrical signals

Previous studies have shown that electrical stimulation of the stomach with appropriate parameters is a promising approach for treatment of gastroparetic patients. The recording of gastric myoelectrical activity by serosal electrodes is often used to evaluate the effect of stimulation. However, the major problem with the measurements of gastric myoelectrical activity during gastric pacing is the stimulus artifacts which are often superimposed on the recorded signal and make spectral analysis unreliable. The transform domain adaptive filter has been used to reduce the stimulus artifacts but only with limited success. This paper presents an adaptive stimulus artifacts reduction method based on fast convergence frequency domain adaptive filtering, without requiring recorded "stimulus-only" reference signal. The results from both simulations and real signals show that the frequency domain adaptive filtering is able to cancel stimulus artifacts with fast convergence speed.
Telecoils are about more than telephones

When Sam Lybarger labeled the small induction coil he used to access the magnetic leakage from telephones a “telecoil,” he could not have foreseen that the ramifications of that decision would be bedeviling us some 60 years later. In 1947, his decision made perfect sense and, when used with telephones, the term “telecoil” still makes perfect sense. But, as can be seen from the two companion articles relating to telecoils in this issue (by David Myers and William Diles), these little structures can provide auditory access to much more than telephones. As these articles demonstrate, telecoils are being employed to hear auditory signals in a wide variety of situations. Yet, the hearing aid dispenser typically makes a decision about the need for a telecoil only on the basis of telephone usage. If a patient does not require a telecoil for this purpose, the hearing professional is unlikely to recommend one. But if we could change that mindset and make it known that these little coils are also effective and convenient receivers for assistive listening devices (ALDs), then their potential benefits could be fully realized in the U.S., as they have been in some other countries. This will be the focus of this article.
Book Reviews: Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing

The concerns of psycholinguists will look very familiar to people engaged in CL research. A major area of investigation in psycholinguistics is determining how a listener uses frequency and other experience-based information during on-line sentence understanding. This book gives computationalists a distinguished guide to the current issues in the field. It is very clear that psycholinguistics has been influenced by recent work in CL, and is ripe for further cross-fertilization. Many of the papers recognize that more rigorous modeling is called for and that these models will require insights from computational linguistics. I will highlight some of the issues that shape current debates, with particular emphasis on areas of common interest between psycholinguistics and CL. The major source of data in the theory of human sentence processing comes from the disambiguation of temporarily ambiguous sentences as in examples (1) and (2):
Practical aspects of physical and MAC layer security in visible light communication systems

Abstract — Visible light communication (VLC) has been recently proposed as an alternative standard to radio-based wireless networks. Originally developed as a physical media for PANs (Personal area Networks) it evolved into universal WLAN technology with a capability to transport internet suite of network and application level protocols. Because of its physical characteristics, and in line with the slogan "what you see is what you send", VLC is considered a secure communication method. In this work we focus on security aspects of VLC communication, starting from basic physical characteristics of the communication channel. We analyze the risks of signal jamming, data snooping and data modification. We also discuss MAC-level security mechanisms as defined in the IEEE 802.15. 7 standard. This paper is an extension of work originally reported in Proceedings of the 13th IFAC and IEEE Conference on Programmable Devices and Embedded Systems — PDES 2015.
The Effect of Explicit Teaching of Comprehension Strategies on Reading Comprehension in Elementary School

The Effect of Explicit Teaching of Comprehension Strategies on Reading Comprehension in Elementary School James Grant Atkins This study investigated the effect of explicit teaching of comprehension strategies on the comprehension performance of elementary school students. Two schools with similar demographics, including a significant proportion of students at risk for reading failure, participated in the study. One school utilized an explicit comprehension strategy instruction program while the other school utilized traditional comprehension programs. A quasiexperimental mixed methods design was employed; standardized and researcher-developed pretests and posttests were administered and observations were conducted over a two-year period. Analyses of covariance that treated the pretests as covariates resulted in significant differences between the schools on several measures, but the overall results did not favor either school. Significantly more instances of explicit instruction were demonstrated by teachers using the explicit program than teachers using the traditional programs. Differences in the number of instances of explicit instruction were most substantial during the student practice and feedback sections of the lessons. Correlations between teacher explicitness scores and student achievement scores and a comparison of the achievement scores of high-explicit and low-explicit teachers (regardless of the school’s program) did not demonstrate a significant relationship between explicit instruction and student performance. However, teachers using the explicit program for their second year demonstrated more explicit instruction than teachers using the program for their first year. Students in the second-year teachers’ classrooms demonstrated superior performance on a passage comprehension assessment compared to students in the first-year teachers’ classrooms. Also, a comparison of the students who had been exposed to the explicit program for two consecutive years and the students who had been exposed to the traditional program for two consecutive years found that second-grade students exposed to the explicit program outperformed their counterparts on most assessments. These results did not indicate an overall relationship between teacher explicitness and student performance. The results do indicate, however, that an explicit comprehension program can result in more explicit instruction in the classroom and that instances of explicit instruction increase when teachers have more experience teaching such a program. Moreover, there is evidence that among experienced teachers, there is a positive relationship between teacher explicitness and student performance.
Defect-oriented testability for asynchronous ICs

For a CMOS manufacturing process, asynchronous ICs are similar to synchronous ICs. The defect density distributions are similar, and hence, so are the fault models and fault-detection methods. So, what makes us think that asynchronous circuits are much harder to test than synchronous circuits? Because the effectiveness of best known test methods for synchronous circuits drops when applied to asynchronous circuits? They may very well be a temporal hurdle. Many test methods have already been reevaluated and successfully adapted from the synchronous to the asynchronous test domain. The paper addresses one of the final hurdles: I/sub DDQ/ testing. This type of test method, based on measuring the quiescent power supply current, is very effective for detecting (resistive) bridging faults in CMOS circuits. Detection of bridging faults is crucial, because they model the majority of today's manufacturing defects. I/sub DDQ/ fault effects are sensitized in a particular state or set of states and can only be detected if we stop the circuit operation right there. This is a problem for asynchronous circuits, because their operation is self-timed. In the paper, we quantify the impact of self timing on the effectiveness of I/sub DDQ/-based test methods for bridging faults, and propose a Design-for-Test (DfT) approach to develop a low-cost DfT solution. For comparison, we do the same for logic voltage testing and stuck-at faults. The approach is illustrated on circuits from Tangram, the asynchronous design-style employed at Philips Research, but it is applicable to asynchronous circuits in general.
A teletraffic analysis of dial-up connections over PSTN

Although new technologies such as xDSL and PONs will soon permit a direct and continuous access to global information infrastructures, such as the Internet, of residential and SOHO (small office-home office) users, dial-up access via analog modems over PSTN remains the most frequent approach. The ever increasing number of Internet users adopting this access modality is leading to two kind of problems: (1) a dimensioning problem for the ISPs which have to properly define the number of modems to guarantee a low refuse probability for the incoming traffic (dial-up connections); (2) terrible implications on dimensioning problems of the PSTN which was designed on the basis of assumptions strongly modified by the new statistical nature of ISP access connections. The paper presents an extensive measurement analysis carried out collecting traffic data offered to an Internet dial-up access server. The characterisation of the arrival process and the call holding time (CHT) distribution is presented. The analyses have pointed out the tail heaviness of the CHT distribution and a non-negligible correlation of the arrival process. The impact of these features on a loss queueing system corresponding to the ISP modem pool is analysed.
Hand Gesture Recognition: A Literature Review

Hand gesture recognition system received great attention in the recent few years because of its manifoldness applications and the ability to interact with machine efficiently through human computer interaction. In this paper a survey of recent hand gesture r ecognition systems is presented. Key issues of hand gesture recognition system are presented with challenges of gesture system. Review methods of recent postures and gestures recognition system presented as well. Summary of research results of hand gesture methods, databases, and comparison between main gesture recognition phases are also given. Advantages and drawbacks of the discussed systems are explained finally.
Acoustic airflow estimation from tracheal sound power

Acoustical analysis of the respiratory sounds (tracheal and lung sounds) has been used to detect respiratory phases (inspiration/expiration) without airflow measurement . This technique facilitates the estimation of airflow by locating the zero crossing of phase transitions from respiratory sounds. Using statistical analysis, previous studies have shown that there is a relationship between respiratory sounds and airflow. However, no attempt was made to estimate airflow and evaluate the error. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine the best model for airflow estimation by acoustical means. Based on some preliminary studies, an exponential model was used to estimate respiratory airflow from average power of tracheal sounds. The model needs only a few breath sounds recorded with airflow for calibration for each subject. The model parameters were derived from the breaths with known airflow and then applied to the rest of the breath sounds to estimate airflow. The model was tested by estimating airflow at various rates from tracheal sounds of ten healthy subjects. Since relationship between airflow and average power of tracheal sound was found to be different for inspiration and expiration, therefore the model parameters were derived for each phase separately. Estimated airflow was compared to actual recorded airflow to determine the error. The results showed that the estimated airflow followed actual airflow well with an error of 5.8 /spl plusmn/ 3.0% of the target airflow.
Measured and predicted correlation between local average power and small scale fading in indoor wireless communication channels

A large data set of wireless indoor propagation measurements collected in several office buildings is analyzed to study the correlation between local average propagation loss and small scale fading statistics. We compare the correlation observed in measurements against the correlation found while simulating the measurements using a 3-D ray-tracing propagation prediction tool for Wireless System Engineering (WiSE). Each measured or predicted location is characterized by 1000 individual data points corresponding to an area several wavelength across, centered in the corresponding location. For each location we have computed measured and predicted average propagation loss and the Rician K-factor for the fluctuations about this mean. We have quantified the correlation between the K-factor and absolute, as well as excess propagation loss. Excess propagation loss is defined as the loss in excess of the loss estimated by a power-law relationship between propagation loss and distance. We show that the excess propagation loss and the small-scale fluctuation level are correlated, so that, when the receiver is not in a shadow, the small-scale signal level fluctuations are Rician with a small standard deviation. We also show that that when the receiver is in a shadow, or obstructed, the small scale signal level may approach a Rayleigh distribution with a large spread of signal levels about the mean. Quantifying this correlation allows greater accuracy and confidence in prediction of wireless channel capacity.
Comparison of the Wind Power Output of a Small Scale Turbine using Statistical and Feed-Forward Neural Network Techniques

This paper presents two techniques for estimating the wind power output at Napler wind site: the use of statistical technique, where the power output of the turbine is estimated based on the developed site power curve; and the use of feed forward neural network (FNN) technique, where the power output of the turbines are estimated based on the artificial intelligence (AI). The FNN utilizes the supervised learning technique where the weather data and the target (desired output) are used to train the network. The site’s wind power potential is evaluated using a 10-minute weather data obtained along the coast of South Africa, recorded for the period of 21 months on a 20m hub height. A small scale 40kW wind turbine is sized for the available wind resources at this height. Results show that the statistical analysis of the wind resources based on the site power curve is an accurate technique for wind energy estimation. In addition, the FNN provides accurate prediction of the wind power output of the 40kW turbine as the wind fluctuates, and the predictions are compared with the wind power output obtained from the statistical technique. The time series wind power estimates using the feed-forward neural network (FNN) technique shows a strong agreement with the estimation obtained using the statistical technique (site power curve). The available energy generation based on the available 21 months wind data at 20m height are estimated at 88.62MWh, 70.95MWh, 70.91MWh using the turbine power curve, site power curve & FNN, respectively. Furthermore, a 2 days power generation is predicted in advance.
Language Transfer and the Acquisition of English Light Verb + Noun Collocations by Chinese Learners

Abstract Transfer has been a controversial issue in the study of second language acquisition. This study concerns language transfer at the lexical level and focuses on the transfer phenomena existing in Chinese college students' acquisition of English light verb + noun collocations. The paper introduces the light verb systems in Mandarin Chinese and English respectively, analyzes the different situations of light verb use in collocations between Chinese and English, and classifies these different situations into seven types. Then it uses three collocation tests as the experimental materials to examine the L1 influence on the students' acquisition of English light verb + noun collocations in relation to these seven types of situations. At last, the paper stresses the importance of transfer in SLA and presents some pedagogical implications for language teaching and learning and some suggestions for further study. 语言迁移理论是应用语言学领域一个较有争议的话题。 本研究试图从词汇搭配层面出发，观察中国大学非英语专业学生在习得英语轻动词+名词搭配过程中的母语迁移现象。 本文首先介绍了汉语和英语中的轻动词系统，并对汉语和英语两种语言中使用轻动词来构成轻动词+名词搭配的不同情况做了对比分析，并对其进行分类，总结为七种类别。 然后通过三套搭配测试题, 分析了受试在习得英语轻动词+名词搭配时所受到的母语影响的程度，并对研究最初提出的几个具体问题做出了解答。 最后本文重申了第一语言迁移现象的重要性，并就此对外语教学以及今后进一步研究的方向提出了几点建议。
EXAMINING THE AGREEMENT BETWEEN STUDENT AND INSTRUCTOR TASK PERCEPTIONS IN A COMPLEX ENGINEERING DESIGN TASK

Understanding assigned tasks is an important skill for academic success. However, few studies have explored the accuracy of task understanding as it develops over the duration of a complex assignment. This study examined explicit, implicit, and socio-cultural aspects of task understanding in the context of an design project assigned to a third year class of Mechanical Engineering students. Specifically, this study examined: (1) the agreement between student and instructors task perceptions for the same complex engineering design task, and (2) changes in both instructor's and students' task perceptions from the beginning to the end of the task. Findings indicate that: (1) students' and instructor task-perceptions generally became more attuned over time, (2) instructor task-understanding evolved over time, and (3) socio-contextual aspects of task-understanding were highly correlated with task and course academic achievement.
Mismatch shaping for a current-mode multibit delta-sigma DAC

Mismatch shaping allows the use of multibit quantization in delta-sigma analog-to-digital converters and digital-to-analog converters (DAC's) since it noise-shapes the error caused by static element mismatch in a multibit DAC. In this paper, mismatch-shaping techniques for low-pass delta-sigma (/spl Delta//spl Sigma/) modulators are reviewed, and a mismatch-shaping technique for bandpass /spl Delta//spl Sigma/ modulators is described. The dynamic error caused by frequent element switching is identified as a major source of error in a current-mode DAC with a continuous-time output. Modifying the mismatch-shaping algorithm to account for this effect yields a continuous-time /spl Delta//spl Sigma/ DAC that is insensitive to both element mismatch and element switching dynamics. Experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed techniques.