Global Financial and Economic Impact on Science,Engineering and Technology Development and Engineering Education in the 21st Century

The science academies of the world are mounting a global initiative on the solutions to problems of sustainability transition in the 21st century. With population and environment as over-arching themes, they have identified food, energy, health, consumption, water and education and information as the six most important issues. The author argues that education should really be an over-arching theme, citing the experience and lessons from the Asian economic crisis and the social, economic and behavioural issues involved in achieving sustainable consumption in the developed world and sustainable development in the developing world. The efforts of science, engineering and technology (SET) in helping the world to a sustainable future must be underpinned by equity, morality and higher human values. The author appeals for a new SET unity and a return to engineering unity with a humane face, and urges engineering educators and practitioners to devote time to community service and involvement and to focus on lifelong continuous engineering education and continuous professional development leading to global reach and mobility of the professional engineers.     

Situational interest and academic achievement in the active-learning classroom

The aim of the present study was to investigate how situational interest develops over time and how it is related to academic achievement in an active-learning classroom. Five measures of situational interest were administered at critical points in time to 69 polytechnic students during a one-day, problem-based learning session. Results revealed that situational interest significantly increased after the problem stimulus was presented. Subsequently, situational interest gradually decreased but at the end of the day increased again. Testing a path model relating the situational interest measures showed strong (directional) interrelations. Moreover, situational interest was highly predictive for observed achievement-related classroom behaviors. The latter, in turn, proved to be a significant predictor of academic achievement. Aggregating situational interest over the day led to less accurate predictions of achievement-related classroom behaviors and academic achievement. Implications of these findings for situational interest research are discussed.     

高等教育质量保证趋势——香港的经验

近20年来,高等教育领域呈现出种种现实的矛盾与悖论。在复杂动荡的情景中,高等院校的教学功能得到了社会前所未有的重视。在过去近10年间,很多国家或地区在高等教育领域都建构了质量评估体系。本文主要分析香港高等教育质量保证过程,在分析其变革动因的同时亦反思在这一过程中可能存在的问题。     

Biclustering of ARMA time series

Biclustering is a method of grouping objects and attributes simultaneously in order to find multiple hidden patterns.When dealing with a long time series,there is a low possibility of finding meaningful clusters of whole time sequence.However,we may find more significant clusters containing partial time sequence by applying a biclustering method.This paper proposed a new biclustering algorithm for time series data following an autoregressive moving average （ARMA） model.We assumed the plaid model but modified the algorithm to incorporate the sequential nature of time series data.The maximum likelihood estimation （MLE） method was used to estimate coefficients of ARMA in each bicluster.We applied the proposed method to several synthetic data which were generated from different ARMA orders.Results from the experiments showed that the proposed method compares favorably with other biclustering methods for time series data.