Accessible e-learning material: a no-frills avenue for didactical experts

Different organizations adopt accessibility for various and diverse reasons. Interesting and inspiring as such reasons may be, it is important to ensure that the motivation for supporting accessibility is that it is the right thing to do, i.e. a commitment to the provision of equal opportunities for accessing resources for people with special needs. Among the various efforts for supporting the development of accessible e-learning material, most of them propose guidelines that prevalently address technical accessibility issues (such as the format and navigation of learning material) with little or no consideration for the didactical experts, and thus their didactical experience, in developing learning material. Moreover, the aforementioned guidelines tend to provide generic indications on alternative forms of didactical content for equivalent access to it. None the less, the sole provision of equivalent forms does not guarantee the retention of desirable user interface aspects and may therefore have a negative impact on learning effectiveness. While this paper acknowledges the role of such guidelines, it does propose that the didactical experts be provided with a non-technical recourse, improving their development of accessible e-learning content. By tapping into the experience of the didactical experts, this work provides them with an avenue leading to enhance the accessibility of e-learning material.     

On analyzing the intra-frame power saving potentials of the IEEE 802.16e downlink vertical mapping

Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) is generally considered as a competitive candidate networking technology for the realization of the 4G vision. Among the key factors towards its successful and widespread deployment are the effective support of mobility and the provision of mechanisms for enabling service access at a high quality level in an efficient and cost-effective manner. Nonetheless, this effort should take into account and adequately address strict and severe energy limitations that the mobile devices are currently facing. Power saving constitutes an issue of vital importance, as mobile terminals continue to incorporate more and more functionalities and energy-hungry features in order to support the ever increasing user requirements and demands. The standard employs variations of power saving classes in a frame-to-frame basis, while recent power saving mechanisms proposed in related research literature limit their activity in whole frames, neglecting, thus, the intra-frame power saving capabilities. In this work, the intra-frame energy conservation potentials of the mobile WiMAX network are studied and a novel analytical approach is provided, focusing on the downlink direction where the bandwidth allocation involves idle intervals and dynamic inactivity periods. Specifically, we endeavour to accurately analyse the potential energy conservation capabilities in an intra-frame point of view, applying the well-known simple packing algorithm to distribute the available bandwidth to the various subscribers. Our analytical findings are thoroughly cross-validated via simulation, providing clear insights into the intra-frame energy reduction capabilities.     

The fate of 14C-radiolabelled diclofenac and 4'-hydroxydiclofenac in membrane bioreactor treatment of wastewater

This study aimed at enhancing knowledge on the fate of diclofenac (DF), together with its main human metabolite 4'-hydroxydiclofenac (4'OHDF), during wastewater treatment by using a laboratory-scale membrane bioreactor (MBR). The reactor was fed continuously with non-radiolabelled diclofenac for a one month period prior to a single pulse of a 14C-radiolabelled solution of DF and 4'OHDF. The solution spike contained approximately 25% 4'OHDF and 65% DF, which corresponds to the ratio observed in municipal sewage, as well as traces of two other metabolites. The radioactivity was monitored for a total of twelve days in the various output streams. The calculation of the complete mass balance in the system demonstrated that the major part of the radioactivity left the reactor with the permeate (88.7%), while 2.1% was recovered in the excess sludge. Negligible amounts were recovered in the off-gas traps and on the membranes. Chromatographic analyses of effluent samples, by means of HPLC-MS coupled in parallel to a radiodetector, displayed a different pattern than the one of the spiked solution. It showed the occurrence of three additional metabolites.     

Sex-related differences in foot shape

The purpose of the study was to investigate sex-related differences in foot morphology. In total, 847 subjects were scanned using a 3-D-footscanner. Three different analysis methods were used: (1) comparisons were made for absolute foot measures within 250-270 mm foot length (FL); (2) and for averaged measures (% FL) across all sizes; (3) the feet were then classified using a cluster analysis. Within 250-270 mm FL, male feet were wider and higher (mean differences (MD) 1.3-5.9 mm). No relevant sex-related differences could be found in the comparison of averaged measures (MD 0.3-0.6% FL). Foot types were categorised into voluminous, flat-pointed and slender. Shorter feet were more often voluminous, longer feet were more likely to be narrow and flat. However, the definition of 'short' and 'long' was sex-related; thus, allometry of foot measures was different. For shoe design, measures should be derived for each size and sex separately. Different foot types should be considered to account for the variety in foot shape. Improper footwear can cause foot pain and deformity. Therefore, knowledge of sex-related differences in foot measures is important to assist proper shoe fit in both men and women. The present study supplements the field of knowledge within this context with recommendations for the manufacturing of shoes.     

Wetland change mapping for the U.S. mid-Atlantic region using an outlier detection technique

Although the impacts of wetland loss are often felt at regional scales, effective planning and management require a comparative assessment of local needs, costs, and benefits. Satellite remote sensing can provide spatially explicit, synoptic land cover change information to support such an assessment. However, a common challenge in conventional remote sensing change detection is the difficulty of obtaining phenologically and radiometrically comparable data from the start and end of the time period of interest. An alternative approach is to use a prior land cover classification as a surrogate for historic satellite data and to examine the self-consistency of class spectral reflectances in recent imagery. We produced a 30-meter resolution wetland change probability map for the U.S. mid-Atlantic region by applying an outlier detection technique to a base classification provided by the National Wetlands Inventory (NWI). Outlier-resistant measures – the median and median absolute deviation – were used to represent spectral reflectance characteristics of wetland class populations, and formed the basis for the calculation of a pixel change likelihood index. The individual scene index values were merged into a consistent region-wide map and converted to pixel change probability using a logistic regression calibrated through interpretation of historic and recent aerial photography. The accuracy of a regional change/no-change map produced from the change probabilities was estimated at 89.6%, with a Kappa of 0.779. The change probabilities identify areas for closer inspection of change cause, impact, and mitigation potential. With additional work to resolve confusion resulting from natural spatial heterogeneity and variations in land use, automated updating of NWI maps and estimates of areal rates of wetland change may be possible. We also discuss extensions of the technique to address specific applications such as monitoring marsh degradation due to sea level rise and mapping of invasive species.     

Supporting Roadmapping of Quality Requirements

Would slightly better performance be significantly more valuable from a market perspective? Would significantly better performance be just slightly more expensive to implement? When dealing with performance, usability, reliability, and so on, you often end up in difficult trade-off analysis. You must take into account aspects such as release targets, end-user experience, and business opportunities. At the same time, you must consider what is feasible with the evolving system architecture and the available development resources.Quality requirements are of major importance in the development of systems for software-intensive products. To be successful, a company must find the right balance among competing quality attributes. How should you balance, for example, investments for improved usability of a mobile phone's phone book and better mobile positioning? In the context of quality requirements, decision making typically combines market considerations and design issues in activities such as roadmapping, release planning, and platform scoping. Models that address requirements prioritization in a market-driven context often emphasize functional aspects. (For a comparison of other relevant techniques with Quper, see the sidebar.) Quper provides concepts for reasoning about quality in relation to cost and value and can be used in combination with existing prioritization approaches.     

Developments in micro-electron beam welding

At the ISF (Joining and Welding Institute, RWTH Aachen University) the long-established electron beam (EB) welding process is investigated to meet the requirements of the field of micro-applications. A modified LEO ZEISS DSM 962 scanning electron microscope (SEM) is being used as a Micro-EB welding machine. The diameter of the beam in welding mode is about 20 μm, with a maximum beam power of 6 Watt at 30 kV acceleration voltage. The process-specific advantages, such as the inertia-free movement of the tool electron beam, the very small beam diameter, the clean room environment which is due to processing in a vacuum (no shielding gas needed) and the excellent applicability for visual quality control offer the best preconditions for hybrid micro-assembly purposes. If the technology is down-scaled to a micro-level, physical effects occur whose consequences must be met with new approaches of solution. Joining of micro-components presupposes optimal contact conditions. If the micro-components are of a flexible type, those optimal conditions are difficult to implement. The ratio of forces during the joining process and also the low stiffness of the components which is due to the small dimensions require, on the one hand, the application of a suitable handling technique or, on the other hand, a specific beam manipulation strategy. Especially in the field of micro-applications, the possibility to exert influence on the thermal distortion by symmetrical heating and solidification processes is of particular importance. Therefore, the reproducibility of the welded joints is one of the great challenges in the field of microwelding. The investigations and developments done at the ISF show successful results in joining stainless steel sheet materials down to 30 μm thickness and steel wire down to 50 μm in diameter, whereas other materials (Tungsten, Aluminum, Titanium, Nickel) are under investigation.     

Earthquake onset detection using spectro-ratio on multi-threshold time–frequency sub-band

Automatic onset detection and picking algorithm has been proposed by applying the spectro-ratio on time–frequency sub-band. The proposed algorithm does not need any parameter settings as it will work on data generated by either short or very broad band seismometers. Our algorithm is applied on local events from Cairo region recorded by three stations of the Egyptian National Seismic Network (ENSN). Maximum standard deviation is observed to be 0.113 s of the corresponding manual picks made by analysts.     

Glimmer: Multilevel MDS on the GPU

We present Glimmer, a new multilevel algorithm for multidimensional scaling designed to exploit modern graphics processing unit (GPU) hardware. We also present GPU-SF, a parallel, force-based subsystem used by Glimmer. Glimmer organizes input into a hierarchy of levels and recursively applies GPU-SF to combine and refine the levels. The multilevel nature of the algorithm makes local minima less likely while the GPU parallelism improves speed of computation. We propose a robust termination condition for GPU-SF based on a filtered approximation of the normalized stress function. We demonstrate the benefits of Glimmer in terms of speed, normalized stress, and visual quality against several previous algorithms for a range of synthetic and real benchmark datasets. We also show that the performance of Glimmer on GPUs is substantially faster than a CPU implementation of the same algorithm.     

The In-Situ Technique for Measuring Input Impedance and Connection Effects of RFID Tag Antenna

In this paper, an indirect noninvasive method for measuring input impedance and the variations in the assembly of the interconnect and packaging between antenna and the integrated circuit (IC) effects of passive radio frequency identification (RFID) transponder (tags) antennas is presented. The analysis of different RFID tags is presented together with the experimental data.