A micropillar array for sample concentration via in-plane evaporation

We present a method to perform sample concentration within a lab-on-a-chip using a microfluidic structure which controls the liquid-gas interface through a micropillar array fabricated in polydimethylsiloxane between microfluidic channels. The microstructure confines the liquid flow and a thermal gradient is used to drive evaporation at the liquid-gas-interface. The evaporation occurs in-plane to the microfluidic device, allowing for precise control of the ambient environment. This method is demonstrated with a sample containing 1 μm, 100 nm fluorescent beads and SYTO-9 labelled Escherichia coli bacteria. Over 100 s, the fluorescent beads and bacteria are concentrated by a factor of 10.     

An empirical investigation of entrepreneurship intensity in Iranian state universities

The purpose of this study is to propose a framework to evaluate the entrepreneurship intensity (EI) of Iranian state universities. In order to determine EI, a hybrid multi-method framework consisting of Delphi, Analytic Network Process (ANP), and VIKOR is proposed. The Delphi method is used to localize and reduce the number of criteria extracted from a deep literature review, according to the social and economic conditions of Iranian state universities by using an expert panel, including sixty-eight country-wide academicians and practitioners. After that, a group approach to ANP was utilized as an evaluation method to derive the weights of each criterion. Next, the evaluation data were gathered through a questionnaire, and, finally, the compromise ranking of universities was calculated using the VIKOR method. Moreover, this study applies weight-variance analysis (WVA) to suggest improvement actions. The paper proposes an evaluation framework for determining the performance of entrepreneurship development initiatives in universities. By using this framework, twenty-two Iranian state universities are evaluated in terms of their EI, and the results are discussed.     

Parents' attitudes towards inclusion of students with autism in Jordan

This study investigated the attitudes of parents in Jordan towards the inclusion of students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in public schools and what the parents believed to be the most important prerequisite of child-based skills for successful inclusion. A total of 148 parents were selected to complete the survey. The researchers explored whether variable demographic characteristics such as age, student's gender, parent's gender, education levels, monthly income, and high- or low-function ASD correlated with the attitudes of parents towards inclusion of students with ASD in public schools. The analyses revealed that the variables that correlated with parents' attitudes towards inclusion were education levels and high- or low-function ASD. The themes behind the parents' attitude for inclusion are discussed. With regard to the prerequisite skills for successful inclusion, the results indicated that parents recommended independent skills, playing skills, behavioural skills, imitation skills, routine skills, social skills, paying attention skills, language skills, and pre-academic and academic skills in that order.     

A family of proportionate normalized subband adaptive filter algorithms

In this paper, the concept of proportionate adaptation is extended to the normalized subband adaptive filter (NSAF), and seven proportionate normalized subband adaptive filter algorithms are established. The proposed algorithms are proportionate normalized subband adaptive filter (PNSAF), μ‐law PNSAF (MPNSAF), improved PNSAF (IPNSAF), the improved IPNSAF (IIPNSAF), the set-membership IPNSAF (SM-IPNSAF), the selective partial update IPNSAF (SPU-IPNSAF), and SM-SPU-IPNSAF which are suitable for sparse system identification in network echo cancellation. When the impulse response of the echo path is sparse, the PNSAF has initial faster convergence than NSAF but slows down dramatically after initial convergence. The MPNSAF algorithm has fast convergence speed during the whole adaptation. The IPNSAF algorithm is suitable for both sparse and dispersive impulse responses. The SM-IPNSAF exhibits good performance with significant reduction in the overall computational complexity compared with the ordinary IPNSAF. In SPU-IPNSAF, the filter coefficients are partially updated rather than the entire filter at every adaptation. In SM-SPU-IPNSAF algorithm, the concepts of SM and SPU are combined which leads to a reduction in computational complexity. The simulation results show good performance of the proposed algorithms.     

Optimized frequency-based foundation design for wind turbine towers utilizing soil-structure interaction

This study illustrates design optimization for multiple wind towers located at different villages in Alaska. The towers are supported by two different types of foundations: large mat or deep piles foundations. Initially, a reinforced concrete (RC) mat foundation was proposed. Where soil conditions required it, a pile foundation solution was devised utilizing a 30 in thick RC mat containing an embedded steel grillage of W18 beams and supported by 20-24 in grouted or un-grouted piles. For faster installation and lower construction cost, all-steel foundations were proposed for these remote Alaska sites. The new all-steel design was found to reduce the natural frequencies of the structural system due to softening the foundation. Thus, the tower-foundation system could potentially become near-resonant with the operational frequencies of the wind turbine. Consequently, the likelihood of structural damage or even the collapse is increased.A detailed 3D finite-element model of the tower-foundation-pile system with RC foundation was created using SAP2000. Soil springs were included in the model based on soil properties obtained from the geotechnical investigation. The natural frequency from the model was verified against the tower manufacturer analytical and experimental values. When piles were used, numerous iterations were carried out to eliminate the need for the RC and optimize the design. An optimized design was achieved with enough separation between the natural and operational frequencies. The design successfully avoids damage to the structural system, while eliminating the need for any RC in most cases.     

Enhancing Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis of Arabic Hotels’ reviews using morphological,syntactic and semantic features

This research presents an enhanced approach for Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis (ABSA) of Hotels’ Arabic reviews using supervised machine learning. The proposed approach employs a state-of-the-art research of training a set of classifiers with morphological, syntactic, and semantic features to address the research tasks namely: (a) T1:Aspect Category Identification, (b) T2:Opinion Target Expression (OTE) Extraction, and (c) T3: Sentiment Polarity Identification. Employed classifiers include Naïve Bayes, Bayes Networks, Decision Tree, K-Nearest Neighbor (K-NN), and Support-Vector Machine (SVM).The approach was evaluated using a reference dataset based on Semantic Evaluation 2016 workshop (SemEval-2016: Task-5). Results show that the supervised learning approach outperforms related work evaluated using the same dataset. More precisely, evaluation results show that all classifiers in the proposed approach outperform the baseline approach, and the overall enhancement for the best performing classifier (SVM) is around 53% for T1, around 59% for T2, and around 19% in T3.     

An evaluation of an adaptive learning system based on multimodal affect recognition for learners with intellectual disabilities

Artificial intelligence tools for education (AIEd) have been used to automate the provision of learning support to mainstream learners. One of the most innovative approaches in this field is the use of data and machine learning for the detection of a student’s affective state, to move them out of negative states that inhibit learning, into positive states such as engagement. In spite of their obvious potential to provide the personalisation that would give extra support for learners with intellectual disabilities, little work on AIEd systems that utilise affect recognition currently addresses this group. Our system used multimodal sensor data and machine learning to first identify three affective states linked to learning (engagement, frustration, boredom) and second determine the presentation of learning content so that the learner is maintained in an optimal affective state and rate of learning is maximised. To evaluate this adaptive learning system, 67 participants aged between 6 and 18 years acting as their own control took part in a series of sessions using the system. Sessions alternated between using the system with both affect detection and learning achievement to drive the selection of learning content (intervention) and using learning achievement alone (control) to drive the selection of learning content. Lack of boredom was the state with the strongest link to achievement, with both frustration and engagement positively related to achievement. There was significantly more engagement and less boredom in intervention than control sessions, but no significant difference in achievement. These results suggest that engagement does increase when activities are tailored to the personal needs and emotional state of the learner and that the system was promoting affective states that in turn promote learning. However, longer exposure is necessary to determine the effect on learning.     

Modern standard Arabic speech corpus for implementing and evaluating automatic continuous speech recognition systems

This paper presents our work towards developing a new speech corpus for Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which can be used for implementing and evaluating Arabic speaker-independent, large vocabulary, automatic, and continuous speech recognition systems. The speech corpus was recorded by 40 (20 male and 20 female) Arabic native speakers from 11 countries representing three major regions (Levant, Gulf, and Africa). Three development phases were conducted based on the size of training data, Gaussian mixture distributions, and tied states (senones). Based on our third development phase using 11 hours of training speech data, the acoustic model is composed of 16 Gaussian mixture distributions and the state distributions tied to 300 senones. Using three different data sets, the third development phase obtained 94.32% and 8.10% average word recognition correctness rate and average Word Error Rate (WER), respectively, for same speakers with different sentences (testing sentences). For different speakers with same sentences (training sentences), this work obtained 98.10% and 2.67% average word recognition correctness rate and average WER, respectively, whereas for different speakers with different sentences (testing sentences) this work obtained 93.73% and 8.75% average word recognition correctness rate and average WER, respectively.     

The role of teacher’s corrective feedback in improving Iranian EFL learners’ writing accuracy over time: is learner’s mother tongue relevant?

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the impact of feedback on writing accuracy over time and examine the relevance of the students’ mother tongue to the feedback effect. To this end, the study compared two groups of Iranian English majors (N = 56) over a period of four months: one with indirect grammar feedback and the other with no grammar feedback whatsoever. The results of the study did not show a significant effect for the teachers’ feedback. However, the results showed a main effect for practice and the interaction of practice and feedback as a result of which both groups improved their writing accuracy over the course of one semester, with the feedback group making more improvement. The results also showed significant differences between the two groups in reducing their errors in various grammatical categories. The study further revealed that the success ratio of error reduction in each category was highly sensitive to cross-linguistic differences. The students’ views, elicited after the study, support the findings obtained from the analysis of the quantitative data.