A Survey of Industry Advisory Board Operation and Effectiveness in Engineering Education

Voluntary boards composed primarily of industry practitioners who give aid and advice are almost universal in engineering education programs, though there has been little published research on this subject. Based on a survey of 90 engineering school directors and advisory board members, this research characterizes the operation, makeup, and effectiveness of advisory boards. The study shows that effective boards have a clear understanding of their role and limitations in influencing curriculum, encourage engagement with students, have formal procedures for involvement in ABET accreditation, and are well coordinated with the larger educational institution. Boards can be effective with or without involvement in fundraising, but it is essential that fundraising expectations be clearly understood and agreed upon by the school and the board. Boards composed largely of members with close ties to the institution, generally alumni, will be more engaged as advocates of the program and will contribute more financially.     

Kinetics and mechanism of the decay of methyl cellulose‐manganate(VI) polysaccharide transient species–novel spectrophotometric kinetic trace of methyl cellulose hypomangate(V) gel intermediate polysaccharide

Kinetics of the decay of methyl cellulose‐manganate(VI) intermediate polysaccharide [MC‐MnO] have been followed spectrophotometrically in different strong basic solutions at different temperatures, as well as, in the presence of different concentrations of perchlorate salt. The reaction is base‐catalyzed. Salt never affects the reactivity. The activation parameters have been evaluated and discussed in connection with the proposal mechanism. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2007     

Action of Triphenylphosphine on some Episulphides; a new Method for the Synthesis of Thermochromic Ethylenes

A new method for the preparation of thermochromic ethylenes by the action of triphenylphosphine on episulphides is described. The desulphurization reaction is assumed to proceed with nucleophilic attack by the phosphine on the sulphur atom of the thiirane ring to give the phosphine sulphide and the olefin in one step.     

A New Approach to Volumes Irradiated by Unknown Sources

We suggest an approach to the characterization of electromagnetic (EM) environments irradiated by unknown sources. The approach is based on the numerical solution of Maxwell's equations subject to the constraints imposed by the measured values of the field at a small number of measurement points and by boundary conditions. A thorough examination of a method for the numerical solution is presented. The examples attempted demonstrate the approach but reveal deficiencies in the numerical method. Possible future directions are suggested.     

Correction factor for nonplanar incident field in monopolecalibrations

In calibrating monopole antennas, the length of the antenna can be comparable to the separation distance. In that case, there is a significant variation in both the magnitude and the phase of the incident field along the length of the antenna under test. An expression for a correction factor is presented to account for this effect. The correction factor is evaluated for some representative cases, and some guidelines are given for when this factor should be taken into account. The effect can exceed 1 dB in some practical cases     

Advanced image steganography based on exploiting modification direction and neutrosophic set

A new variant of image steganography based on exploiting modification directions (EMD) named advanced EMD (AEMD) is introduced. In this method the secret digits in mⁿ -ary notional systems are embedded into a group of n pixels of the cover image. To increase data hiding capacity, edge masking characteristics of human visual system is exploited to embed more bits at image edge pixels than non-edge pixels. To do this, a neutrosophic set edge detector, named as MNSED is also introduced to classify cover image into 2?×?2 non-overlapping edge and non-edge blocks without any overhead information. Hence the secret digits in two different bases are embedded into the edge and non-edge blocks. Experimental results show that the proposed method provides higher embedding capacity and better quality compared to the existing schemes, while its resistance to steganographic attack is still higher.

     

Comparison of in vivo and ex vivo cellular structure in rabbit eyes detected by tandem scanning microscopy

Using the tandem scanning microscope, in vivo confocal microscopic images of living eyes were compared to images obtained from ex vivo, freshly enucleated or fixed tissue in the rabbit. In the normal cornea, microscopic details of the superficial epithelium, basal lamina, stromal fibrocyte nuclei, nerves and endothelial cell borders were easily discernible. Removal of the eye from the intact animal resulted in loss of detail with distortion of the normal structural interrelationships within the corneal stroma whilst enhancing details of the corneal epithelium. Formalin fixation further enhanced details of the basal and suprabasal corneal epithelial cell nuclei and the stromal fibrocyte cell borders whilst inducing prominent brightly reflecting folds in the thickened stroma with concomitant enhancement of the edge contrast of the collagen lamellae. These changes appeared to be related, in part, to hydration of the cornea and artefactual pooling of water between structures that may enhance reflectivity by increasing the difference between the refractive index of the cellular and extracellular elements. We conclude that microscopic examination of ex vivo preparations of corneal tissue, although providing increased resolution similar to conventional light microscopic techniques, significantly altered the normal structural relationships and could lead to erroneous measurements of the physiological properties of the tissue as compared to in vivo microscopy of undisturbed, intact tissue.