The mutual impact of personality traits on seating preference and educational achievement

Several studies have investigated the association between students' seating positions and their classroom performance. However, the role of personality traits on seating preference in the classroom has not been well investigated. The aim of the study was to understand how students choose their seats according to their personality traits in a classroom context and the influence of personality characteristics and seat selection on educational achievement. The seating positions of the medical students were recorded on an architectural plan during each class session, and the means and standard deviations of the students' locations were calculated in X and Y orientations. The locations of the students in the class were analyzed based on three architectural classifications: interactional zone, distance from the board, and access to the aisles. The NEO Five-Factor Inventory was used to evaluate the five main personality characteristics of the students. Midterm and final exam scores were used to measure the students' educational achievement. Analysis of variance showed a statistical significance correlation between the interactional zones and both agreeableness and conscientiousness. Mantel–Haenszel analysis showed a statistical significance association between sex and agreeableness and openness to experiences, which was mainly caused by zone II. Among the tested characteristics, a statistically significant relationship was observed between agreeableness and final exam scores. There was a statistical significance difference in openness and extraversion between the students with a high number of absences and their classmates. A relationship between the student's locations in the class, their educational achievements, and some of their personality characteristics are addressed.     

Engineering a General Education Program: Designing Mechanical Engineering General Education Courses

The Department of Mechanical Engineering at our institution created two engineering courses for the General Education Program that count towards second level general science credit (traditional science courses are first level). The courses were designed for the general student population based upon the requirements of our General Education Program and engineering concepts. We explain the results and impact of the classes so as to expand the conceptualization of general education courses and to enable engineering curricula to reach a larger audience as well as to broaden student understanding of the forces shaping their world.     

A security-embedded infrastructure for Tele-Traffic Speed Control

In this paper we introduce a novel approach, relying on intelligent engineering, whereby the maximum speed limit at which vehicles on the road can cruise is controlled from some central or distributed facility. The system, as designed, leverages the use of the ubiquitous cellular infrastructure to cut down the costs involved that would otherwise accrue as a result of the need to build a dedicated traffic control system.In the new system maximum speed limits are transmitted from a Central Control Facility (CCF) to all stretches of roads and highways dispersed across urban areas in a highly dynamic manner. The system uses information arriving via a dynamic feedback system on prevailing weather conditions, road conditions, and bulk of traffic, amongst others, before it would broadcast maximum speed limit information to various destinations. When deployed in its final release, this will be done using a highly automated system with little human intervention.The work presented in this paper elaborates the TTC Network Design and RSU Network Distribution for the Tele-Traffic Speed Control System, to remotely manage, enforce, and control the maximum speed limit allowed on road stretches in rural and urban areas for different vehicle categories.The new system has been deployed successfully in a laboratory controlled environment on three vehicle categories; one category representing passenger vehicles, another buses and commuter transport, while the third representing trucks and freight traffic. It is expected that when the system is fully deployed on the wireless infrastructure, speed-related traffic accidents will witness a drop by more than 65-70% according to known accident statistics.     

Taxonomy of e-readiness assessment measures

To benefit from the advantages of information society, on the one hand, and to be afraid of being left further behind by Global Society and the increase in the digital divide, on the other hand, stimulate countries to be part of Global Information Society. These issues have led policymakers to move towards such a society by identifying the objectives, goals and targets. Planning to achieve these objectives needs a real understanding of the current situation, which is obtained by e-readiness assessment measures. There has been a proliferation of e-readiness assessment measures in recent years that each one has a certain objective. This paper elaborates on and categorizes these measures that help scholars and policymakers to (1) select the measures that fit in with their objectives, (2) prevent the repetitive research, (3) identify the defects and flaws of previous measures and correct them in their own measures, and (4) use the experiences of previous measures to construct their own ones. Based on definitions, objectives, dimensions, methods and approaches, in this paper, the measures are categorized and finally, a measure for e-readiness assessment is presented. Since this measure is a convergence of e-readiness assessment measures, the experienced modelers have consensus on it and it is more suitable to measure e-readiness of countries. Also, it can be exploited as the basis and standard for internationally comparable information society statistics.     

DistanceRank: An intelligent ranking algorithm for web pages

A fast and efficient page ranking mechanism for web crawling and retrieval remains as a challenging issue. Recently, several link based ranking algorithms like PageRank, HITS and OPIC have been proposed. In this paper, we propose a novel recursive method based on reinforcement learning which considers distance between pages as punishment, called “DistanceRank” to compute ranks of web pages. The distance is defined as the number of “average clicks” between two pages. The objective is to minimize punishment or distance so that a page with less distance to have a higher rank. Experimental results indicate that DistanceRank outperforms other ranking algorithms in page ranking and crawling scheduling. Furthermore, the complexity of DistanceRank is low. We have used University of California at Berkeley’s web for our experiments.     

Relationship between free iron and glycated hemoglobin in uncontrolled type 2 diabetes patients associated with complications

Free iron in serum has been found in several disease conditions including diabetes. In the present work, we studied the relationship between free iron, fasting blood glucose (FBG) and glycated haemoglobin (HbA_1c). Study was carried out on 50 type 2 diabetes cases under poor glycemic control associated with complications, 53 type 2 diabetes cases under good glycemic control and 40 healthy controls. We estimated free iron, both ferrous (Fe⁺²) and ferric (Fe⁺³) form, protein thiols, lipid hydroperoxides, FBG, HbA1c and serum ferritin levels in serum. There was a significant increase in free iron in Fe⁺³ state (p <0.01), HbA_1c (p<0.01), serum ferritin (p<0.01), lipid hydroperoxides (p<0.01) and significant decrease in protein thiols (<0.01) in diabetes cases under poor glycemic control compared to diabetes cases under good glycemic control and healthy controls. Free iron correlated positively with HbA_1c (p<0.01). Poor glycemic control and increase in glycation of haemoglobin is contributing to the increase in free iron pool which is known to increase oxidant generation.     

Green roofs for storm water management: a review

The rapid urbanization and industrialization involve an unsustainable use of natural systems,leading to various problems in cities.The urban hydrological system experiences fluctuating amount of surfac...     

Application of Quality Function Deployment for the Improvement of Quality in an Engineering Department

In adopting a customer‐oriented approach to higher education, quality function deployment (QFD) is one of the total quality management techniques which can be applied for process and design improvement. Following a review of some practices in this sector, this paper outlines a QFD model in which the opinions of three groups of customers are utilized for quality planning. A developed framework for the dimensions of quality in engineering education was used in conjunction with the quality processes in a departmental quality management framework proposed by the Engineering Professors’ Council. The results from the QFD led to a strategy for prioritizing the different quality processes within a school/department.     

Characterization of a-Si:H/SiN multilayer waveguide polarization using an optical pumping application—LED

This paper describes the fabrication of a waveguide and the analysis of its polarization characteristics by applying light-emitting diode （LED） pumping lights to its surface. By using double tubed coaxial line （DTCL） microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition （MPCVD） equipment, an a-Si：H/SiN multilayer waveguide was fabricated whose thickness could be controlled at nanometer order. The main structural material of the waveguide sample consisted of a combination of layers of amorphous silicon hydrogen and silicon nitrate. Once the sample was ready, another major objective of the experiment was to analyze the polarization characteristics of the fabricated waveguide. The idea of the experiment was to analyze how the waveguide reacts when three types of LED （blue, yellow, and red） are radiated onto its surface. The results showed that the fabrication of the a-Si：H/SiN sample is successful. Most effective transmission results, which accord with the polarization characteristics analysis, were obtained.