Undergraduate engineering—a comparative study of first year performance in single gender campuses

The Jerusalem College of Technology is an institution for higher education in Israel, where the majority of the students study towards an undergraduate degree in Engineering (Electronics, Applied Optics, Computers, etc.). The studies are held on three different campuses, one campus for men and two for women. We describe the organization of the Foundation Year (i.e. the basic first year courses), and discuss the similarities and differences between the male and female populations, with respect to their learning skills and performances.     

Inter-industry knowledge flows and sectoral networks in the economy of Malaysia

This research probes the configuration of technological systems in terms of inter-sectoral knowledge and intermediate goods exchanges based on a case study of 21 industry sectors in the economy of Malaysia. The case study draws on a network analysis of sectoral knowledge flows survey data and input–output exchange statistics. The results show that knowledge acquisition and dissemination networks are relatively more intra-sector, denser, and centralized than goods exchange networks, which can affect how innovations spread through the economy. Knowledge networks, however, are more likely to form sub-networks with potentially diverse capabilities and influence on the technological system. This adds new information and value for knowledge-based sectoral investment strategies.     

On improving Tunstall codes

Though many compression methods are based on the use of variable length codes, there has recently been a trend to search for alternatives in which the lengths of the codewords are more restricted, which can have useful applications, such as easier processing and fast decoding. This paper explores the construction of variable-to-fixed length codes, which have been suggested long ago by Tunstall. Using new heuristics based on suffix trees, the performance of Tunstall codes can in some cases be improved by more than 40%.