Influence of fat content on the quality and shelf life of cured sardines

The paper presents results of studies on the effect of seasonal variations in the fat content on the quality and shelf life of dry cured, pickle cured and smoke cured oil sardines. The merits and defects of each method of curing during different seasons are discussed.

On the comparative efficiency of trawls made of cotton, polyethylene and combination of both the materials

The merits and demerits of cotton, polyethylene and combination of the two materials ascertained on the basis of cost, wear and tear, maintenance, total catch and qualitative analysis of the catch are discussed by making comparative fishing experiments with the three trawl gears made of these materials. The study can be concluded with a suggestion for switching over to polyethylene twisted monofilaments for better, in case of bottom trawls without in any way adversely affecting the catch of shrimps and at the same time for enhanced fish catch. Even though the combination net is found to be equal in efficiency as the polyethylene net this idea cannot be conveniently adopted from the point of view of economy.

Age, technology prior experience and ease of use: Who's doing what?

Designers often assume that their users will have some digital technological prior experience. We examined these levels of prior experience by surveying frequency and ease of technology use with a range of technology products. 362 people participated as part of a UK nationwide larger survey of people's capabilities and characteristics to inform product design. We found that frequency and self-reported ease of use are indeed correlated for all of the products. Furthermore, both frequency and ease of use declined significantly with age for most of the products. In fact, 29% of the over 65s had never or rarely used any of the products, except for digital TV. We conclude that interfaces need to be designed carefully to avoid implicit assumptions about users' previous technology use.

Development and Evaluation of Blind Identification Techniques for Nonlinear Systems

Identification and Control of Non‐linear dynamical systems are challenging problems to the control engineers.The topic is equally relevant in communication,weather prediction ,bio medical systems and even in social systems,where nonlinearity is an integral part of the system behavior.Most of the real world systems are nonlinear in nature and wide applications are there for nonlinear system identification/modeling.The basic approach in analyzing the nonlinear systems is to build a model from known behavior manifest in the form of system output.The problem of modeling boils down to computing a suitably parameterized model,representing the process.The parameters of the model are adjusted to optimize a performanace function,based on error between the given process output and identified process/model output.While the linear system identification is well established with many classical approaches,most of those methods cannot be directly applied for nonlinear system identification.The problem becomes more complex if the system is completely unknown but only the output time series is available.Blind recognition problem is the direct consequence of such a situation.The thesis concentrates on such problems.Capability of Artificial Neural Networks to approximate many nonlinear input-output maps makes it predominantly suitable for building a function for the identification of nonlinear systems,where only the time series is available.The literature is rich with a variety of algorithms to train the Neural Network model.A comprehensive study of the computation of the model parameters,using the different algorithms and the comparison among them to choose the best technique is still a demanding requirement from practical system designers,which is not available in a concise form in the literature.The thesis is thus an attempt to develop and evaluate some of the well known algorithms and propose some new techniques,in the context of Blind recognition of nonlinear systems.It also attempts to establish the relative merits and demerits of the different approaches.comprehensiveness is achieved in utilizing the benefits of well known evaluation techniques from statistics. The study concludes by providing the results of implementation of the currently available and modified versions and newly introduced techniques for nonlinear blind system modeling followed by a comparison of their performance.It is expected that,such comprehensive study and the comparison process can be of great relevance in many fields including chemical,electrical,biological,financial and weather data analysis.Further the results reported would be of immense help for practical system designers and analysts in selecting the most appropriate method based on the goodness of the model for the particular context.

Characteristics and applications of energy storage system to power network - A review

Maintaining reliability and stability of a power systems in transmission and distribution level becomes a big challenge in present scenario. Grid operators are always responsible to maintain equilibrium between available power generation and demand of end users. Maintaining grid balance is a bigger issue, in case of any unexpected generation shortage or grid disturbance or integration of any renewable energy sources like wind and solar power in the energy mix. In order to compensate such imbalance and to facilitate more renewable energy sources with the grid, energy storage system (ESS) started to be playing an important role with the advancement of the state of the art technology. ESS can also help to get reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emission by means of integrating more renewable energy sources to the grid. There are various types of Energy Storage (ES) technologies which are being used in power systems network from large scale (above 50MW) to small scale (up to 100KW). Based on the characteristics, each storage technology has their own merits and demerits. This paper carried out extensive review study and verifies merits and demerits of each storage technology and identifies the suitable technology for the future. This paper also has conducted feasibility study with the aid of E-SelectTM tool for various ES technologies in applications point of view at different grid locations. This review study helps to evaluate feasible ES technology for a particular electrical application and also helps to develop smart hybrid storage system for grid applications in efficient way.

Valuing transferred machine tool technology:Relating value to product attributes and preferences of acquirers

The value of technology and the appropriate form of transfer arrangement are important questions to be resolved when transferring technology between Western manufacturing firms and partners in industrialising and developing countries. This article reports on surveys carried out in the machine tool industries in the UK and China to establish the differences and similarities between owners and acquirers of technology regarding the relative importance of the factors they evaluate, and the assessments they make, when considering a technology transfer. It also outlines the development of a framework for technology valuation. The survey results indicate that the value of product technology is related to superior technical performance, especially on reliability and functionality, and the prospects of premium prices and increased sales of the technology transfer based machine tools. Access to markets is the main objective of UK companies, while Chinese companies are concerned about improving their technological capability. There are significant risks, especially related to performance in the market, and while owners and acquirers have benefited in the short term, the long term collaboration required for strategic benefits has been difficult to achieve because of the different priorities of the owners and the acquirers.

Law students' perspectives of the affect of academics' use of technology

Previous work within the Faculty of Law, QUT had considered law students perceptions and use of technology and how to manage that use without it becoming a distraction. Students willingness to use technology for their learning purposes, however, had not been tested. The research seeks to understand the affect of law academics in class use of technology for both law and justice students. Students use and their perception of academics use in lectures and tutorials was tested by means of an online survey conducted on an anonymous and voluntary basis. The analysis of results revealed that the majority of respondents rarely use technology in class for their learning purposes. However, most indicated that academic in class use of technology enabled their learning. The research also reinforced the need to make any level of engagement with technology meaningful for students. In particular it identified the need to ensure that students are enabled, by appropriate training, in their use of any required databases or software.

Case study: Mastering the governance of technology

Case study on how the Heart of Worcestershire College is leading a project with four other colleges to support college governors in making confident, effective and well-informed decisions on the investment, innovation and development of technology use to support learning.

Effects of buffer layers on the stress and morphology of GaN epilayer grown on Si substrate by MOCVD

Low temperature (LT) AlN interlayer and insertion of superlattice are two effective methods to reduce crack and defects for GaN grown on Si substrate. In this paper, the influence of two kinds of buffer on stress, morphology and defects of GaN/Si are studied and discussed. The results measured by optical microscope and Raman shift show that insertion of superlattice is more effective than insertion of LT-AlN in preventing the formation of cracks in GaN grown on Si substrate. Cross-sectional TEM images show that the not only screw but edge-type dislocation densities are greatly reduced by using the superlattice buffer. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The inner circle of technology innovation : a case study of two Chinese firms

In the era of information economy, Chinese firms have realised that technology innovation is fundamental for organisations to gain competitive advantages in the global market. This case study evaluates the drivers and antecedents of technology innovation of two emerging Chinese multinational firms. Institutional theory, the resource-based view and the competency-based strategic perspective are used as the basis for case analysis. The findings show some similarities and differences between the growth of Chinese multinational firms and those of more traditional ones. Chinese firms appear not to follow single innovation pathways but take multiple routes combining several types of innovation, such as strategic, organisational and operational innovation. The key component in the successful technology innovation process among Chinese firms was found to be in alignment with several human resource management strategies. The case study concludes with discussion on managerial and pedagogical implications. These help address inherent differences in the innovation management process between emerging Chinese and established multinational firms.

Acceptance and use of MOODLE

Learning management systems such as Moodle have become an integral part of today’s universities. While commonly used throughout the world, there has been disproportionate attention to peoples’ acceptance and use of such technologies. What is worth specific attention is how students may perceive learning technologies differently to their professors. Using the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology or UTAUT this dataset illustrates attitudes towards and usage behaviours of Moodle for both students and academics. The findings point to key similarities and differences, the latter of which departs from extant literature that suggests no difference between generations. However given the lack of support for the UTAUT model, it is suggested that theoretical models of technology acceptance and use need to evolve to appropriately capture the environment of higher education in which learning management systems such as Moodle are used.

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy

In 2008 we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, research on this topic has continued to accelerate, and many new scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Accordingly, it is important to update these guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Various reviews have described the range of assays that have been used for this purpose. Nevertheless, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to measure autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. A key point that needs to be emphasized is that there is a difference between measurements that monitor the numbers or volume of autophagic elements (e.g., autophagosomes or autolysosomes) at any stage of the autophagic process vs. those that measure flux through the autophagy pathway (i.e., the complete process); thus, a block in macroautophagy that results in autophagosome accumulation needs to be differentiated from stimuli that result in increased autophagic activity, defined as increased autophagy induction coupled with increased delivery to, and degradation within, lysosomes (in most higher eukaryotes and some protists such as Dictyostelium) or the vacuole (in plants and fungi). In other words, it is especially important that investigators new to the field understand that the appearance of more autophagosomes does not necessarily equate with more autophagy. In fact, in many cases, autophagosomes accumulate because of a block in trafficking to lysosomes without a concomitant change in autophagosome biogenesis, whereas an increase in autolysosomes may reflect a reduction in degradative activity. Here, we present a set of guidelines for the selection and interpretation of methods for use by investigators who aim to examine macroautophagy and related processes, as well as for reviewers who need to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of papers that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a formulaic set of rules, because the appropriate assays depend in part on the question being asked and the system being used. In addition, we emphasize that no individual assay is guaranteed to be the most appropriate one in every situation, and we strongly recommend the use of multiple assays to monitor autophagy. In these guidelines, we consider these various methods of assessing autophagy and what information can, or cannot, be obtained from them. Finally, by discussing the merits and limits of particular autophagy assays, we hope to encourage technical innovation in the field.

Antecedents and consequences of service quality in consumer evaluation of self-service internet technologies

Advances in technology coupled with increasing labour costs have caused service firms to explore self-service delivery options. Although some studies have focused on self-service and use of technology in service delivery, few have explored the role of service quality in consumer evaluation of technology-based self-service options. By integrating and extending the self-service quality framework the service evaluation model and the Technology Acceptance Model the authors address this emerging issue by empirically testing a comprehensive model that captures the antecedents and consequences of perceived service quality to predict continued customer interaction in the technology-based self-service context of Internet banking. Important service evaluation constructs like perceived risk, perceived value and perceived satisfaction are modelled in this framework. The results show that perceived control has the strongest influence on service quality evaluations. Perceived speed of delivery, reliability and enjoyment also have a significant impact on service quality perceptions. The study also found that even though perceived service quality, perceived risk and satisfaction are important predictors of continued interaction, perceived customer value plays a pivotal role in influencing continued interaction.

Technology professional development for principals: Impact on the integration of technology in elementary schools

The use of technology in schools is no longer the topic of educational debates, but how to ensure that technology is used effectively continues to be the focal point of discussions. The role of the principal in facilitating the successful integration of technology in the school is well established. To that end, the Florida Department of Education implemented the FloridaLeaders.net: a three-year professional development project in technology for school administrators. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of this professional development project on integrating technology in elementary schools. ^ The study compared a group of schools whose principals have participated in the FloridaLeaders.net (FLN) program with schools whose principals have not participated in the program. The National Technology Standards for School Administrators and the National Technology Standards for Teachers were used as the framework to assess technology integration. ^ The sample consisted of three groups of educators: principals (n = 47), media specialists (n = 110), and teachers (n = 167). Three areas of technology utilization were investigated: (a) the use of technology in management and operations, (b) the use of technology in teaching and learning, and (c) the use of technology for assessment and evaluation. Analyses of variances were used to examine the differences in the perceptions and use of technology in each of the three areas, among the three groups of educators. ^ The findings indicated that the difference between FLN and non-FLN schools was not statistically significant in most of the technology indicators. The difference was however significant in two cases: (a) The use of technology for assessment and evaluation, and (b) The level of technology infrastructure in FLN schools. Additionally, all FLN and non-FLN groups reported the need for technology training for teachers to provide them with the necessary "know-how" to effectively integrate technology into the classrooms. ^ These findings would indicate that FloridaLeaders.net was not effective in integrating technology in schools over and above other current efforts. It is therefore concluded that the FLN project had some favorable impact but had not met all of its stated objectives. ^

连续流动式聚合酶链式反应生物芯片／微装置中脱氧核糖核酸样品的驱动控制技术进展

介绍国内外连续流动式聚合酶链式反应生物芯片/微装置中脱氧核糖核酸样品的驱动控制技术进展,主要包括恒流泵(注射泵驱动和蠕动泵驱动)、旋转泵驱动、磁流体动力驱动以及自然对流驱动等。并对这几种驱动方式的优缺点作简要的讨论(引用文献43篇)。