ABSTRACT:
On-line and distance professional learning communities provides teachers with increased access and flexibility as well as the combination of work and education. It also provides a more learner-centered approach, enrichment and new ways of interacting with teachers in isolated rural areas. For educational administrators, on-line learning offers high quality and usually cost-effective professional development for teachers. It allows upgrading of skills, increased productivity and development of a new learning culture. At the same time, it means sharing of costs, of training time, increased portability of training, and the exchange of creativity, information, and dialogue.

ABSTRACT:
Research has found that increasing learner control offers several benefits, including increased motivation, attitude, and learning. The goal of the present study was to determine how prior math achievement influences students’ selection of the difficulty level of problems within Math Pursuits, a hypermedia learning program. Math Pursuits was designed to help children understand mathematics by discovering how it relates to the world around them. The program presented each learner with an adjustable level of challenge, along with the necessary scaffolding to support success. The researchers hypothesized that students with lower math skills would choose to start with a lower difficultly level; whereas, students with higher math skills would begin the program by choosing a question with a higher level of difficulty. Results supported these hypotheses. This research also examined the motivational framework guiding students’ selection of problem difficulty.

ABSTRACT:
The emerging Telemedicine and Telesurgery technologies allow patients to share medical experts remotely through communication networks. However, network bandwidth, network latency and jitter (variation of latency), are the obstacles to the widespread use of this technology remotely. Optical Burst Switching (OBS) networks greatly expand network bandwidth in existing network infrastructure by utilizing multiple DWDM channels within a single fiber, enabling high bandwidth applications. However, the burst assembly process in OBS networks introduces latency and jitter, making it unsuitable for high bandwidth, latency sensitive applications such as telesurgery and telemedicine. In this paper, we propose a content aware burst assembly scheme which dynamically adjusts the burst assembly parameters based on the content being assembled. The proposed content aware burst assembly minimizes the latency and jitter within a video frame, as well as across the left-view and right-view frames for 3D vision generation. Simulation results have shown that the proposed scheme can effectively reduce the latency and jitter experienced by video streams, making OBS a promising candidate for supporting telesurgery and telemedicine applications.

ABSTRACT:
Parabolic partial differential equations with nonlocal boundary conditions arise in modeling of a wide range of important application areas such as chemical diffusion, thermoelasticity, heat conduction process, control theory and medicine science. In this paper, we present the implementation of positivity- preserving Padé numerical schemes to the two-dimensional diffusion equation with nonlocal time dependent boundary condition. We successfully implemented these numerical schemes for both Homogeneous and Inhomogeneous cases. The numerical results show that these Padé approximation based numerical schemes are quite accurate and easily implemented.

ABSTRACT:
The purpose of this paper is to achieve an understanding of design activities in the context of building design. The starting point is an overview of design research and design methodology. From the insights gained by this analysis of design in this specific context, we present an ‘organization structure and design’ workshop approach for collaborative multi-discipline design management. The workshops set-up, used to implement and to test the approach, are presented as well as the experiences of the participants. The project was done in close cooperation with the professional societies with in the Dutch building design field. More than one hundred experienced professionals participated in the workshops. The workshops have become part of the permanent professional training program Dutch architectural society.

ABSTRACT:
Form testing interferometry permits a fast, non-tactile and full- field quantitative phase imaging of components in ultra precise manufacturing. To reduce the influence of vibrations under manufacturing conditions, it is most common to use the FT- based spatial carrier phase measurement technique (SCPM) which requires only a single interferogram recording. The utilization of a generalized, relatively new spatial phase-shifting method operating in the position space opens up prospects for reduced phase noise and less reconstruction errors of the calculated phase-map under production conditions. Therefore this phase-shifting technique is investigated for applicability in machine integrated interferometric form testing of optical lenses. A characterization of the algorithm and a comparison with the commonly used FT-based algorithm is performed. As a reference, measurements are carried out with a coordinate measuring machine with nanometre accuracy.

ABSTRACT:
Due to the particular geographical location and geological condition, Taiwan is constantly attacked by typhoons, flood, landslides, debris flows, and earthquakes. Those natural hazards had caused huge loss of lives and properties. To reduce the damages and losses caused by the natural hazards, an integrated and complete decision support system for decision makers is necessary. In this study, Safe Taiwan information system (SATIS), which includes two subsystems, response operation subsystem for staff members and decision support subsystem for commanders, is developed for preparedness and response of typhoon hazards. It is based on the Web- GIS framework that the disaster information can be distributed via internet technology. When typhoon is approaching, response operation subsystem is used by National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction (NCDR) staffs to integrate real-time monitoring information, hazard models and graphical user interfaces to analyze and manage the disaster information such as the current position and possible path of typhoon, the spatial distribution of rainfalls, and potential areas of flooding, landslides and debris flows. The input data of this subsystem includes the basic maps, the real-time information of typhoon and rainfall issued by the Central Weather Bureau, the real-time water information from the Water Resources Agency, and the hazard maps indicating areas of potential landslide, debris flow and flooding made by NCDR herself to estimate endangered areas under the current typhoon. There are four main modules integrated into the subsystem including the rainfall monitoring and forecasting, the estimation of potential inundation areas, the estimation of potential landslide and debris flows, and the management of disaster information. The results of hazard risk analysis which include potential rainfall distribution, inundation and landslide risk areas, early warning messages, and total suggestion over the next 24 hours are finally demonstrated by decision support subsystem in the National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC) and help the commander to make the right decisions in disaster preparedness and response phases. In the future, SATIS will integrate social and economic information into the assessment of natural hazard vulnerability. It can help the commander to know the high-risk areas and make the right decision.

ABSTRACT:
This article extends an approach to simulate and control anthro- pomorphic kinematics as multiagent-systems. These "anthro- pomorphic multiagent-systems" have originally been developed to control coordinated multirobot systems in industrial applica- tions, as well as to simulate humanoid robots. Here, we apply the approach of the anthropomorphic multiagent-systems to propose a "Virtual Human" - a model of human kinematics - to analyze ergonomic conditions at manual workplaces. Ergonom- ics provide a wide range of methods to evaluate human postures and movements. By the simulation and animation of the Virtual Human we develop examples of how results from the field of ergonomics can help to consider the human factor during the design and optimization phases of production lines.

ABSTRACT:
Our ultimate goal is to design transportation net- works whose dynamic performance metrics (e.g. pas- senger throughput, passenger delay, and insensitivity to weather disturbances) are optimized. Here the fo- cus is on optimizing static features of the network that are known to directly affect the network dynamics. First, we present simulation results which support a connection between maximizing the first non-trivial eigenvalue of a network’s Laplacian and superior air- port network performance. Then, we explore the ef- fectiveness of a tabu search heuristic for optimizing this metric by comparing experimental results to the- oretical upper bounds. We also consider generating upper bounds on a network’s algebraic connectivity via the solution of semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations. A modification of an existing subgraph extraction algorithm is implemented to explore the underlying regional structures in the U.S. airport net- work, with the hope that the resulting localized struc- tures can be optimized independently and reconnected via a “backbone” network to achieve superior network performance.

ABSTRACT:
For the recent years there was an increasing interest in different methods of motion analysis based on visual data acquisition. Vision systems, intended to obtain quantitative data regarding motion in real time are especially in demand. This paper talks about the vision systems that allow the receipt of information on relative object motion in real time. It is shown, that the algorithms solving a wide range of practical problems by definition of relative movement can be generated on the basis of the known algorithms of an optical flow calculation. One of the system’s goals is the creation of economically efficient intellectual sensor prototype in order to estimate relative objects motion based on optic flow. The results of the experiments with a prototype system model are shown.

ABSTRACT:
The Introductory literacy course has undergone many changes over the last several years. Of course the content has changed over time. However, the delivery of this course is also changing. In this paper we present a delivery method that the author(s) have employed for the last several years which incorporates active learning, experiential learning and team based approaches including virtual teams However, in today’s global society, the incorporation of project management skills and theory has also become a new and critical component of the Information Literacy course.

ABSTRACT:
A toll road (or toll way, turnpike, pike, or toll highway) is a roadway where drivers pay tolls (i.e. fees) for the use. In addition to fuel tax or general tax funds, toll collection is an alternative source of revenue generation [1]. Decision makings of a toll road may depend on a lot of factors such as regional economics, local and national policies, and even population density. It is an interesting phenomenon that there are more toll roads in the eastern part of The United States than in the western part. However, there is no discussion and analysis about this unbalanced distribution, not to say to explore the reasons behind. This paper aims to find out if it is really true that there are more toll roads in the eastern part of the U.S. than in the western part, and the reasons for national toll roads distribution through different analytical angles. The result can help in the perfection of national and state roadway network and toll roads designs in U.S., which will also be beneficial to the development and improvement of toll roads and modern highway system in developing countries and other developed countries.

ABSTRACT:
Capitalizing on company’s knowledge is increasingly being recognized in a private organizations environment since managing knowledge productivity is considered a source of competitive advantage. In this paper we present a generalization of GAMETH framework, that play an important role in identifying crucial knowledge used and created in innovative product design process. Thus, we have developed a method based on three phases. In the first phase, we have used GAMETH to identify the set of “reference knowledge”. During the second phase, decision rules are inferred, through rough sets theory, from decision assignments provided by the decision maker(s). In the third phase, a multicriteria classification of “potential crucial knowledge” is performed on the basis of the decision rules that have been collectively identified by the decision maker(s).