Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Technologies for Construction

This book will be of particular interest to academics, researchers, and graduate students at universities and industrial practitioners seeking to apply mobile and pervasive computing systems to improve construction industry productivity.

A review of TRIZ, and its benefits and challenges in practice

TRIZ (the theory of inventive problem solving) has been promoted by several enthusiasts as a systematic methodology or toolkit that provides a logical approach to developing creativity for innovation and inventive problem solving. The methodology, which emerged from Russia in the 1960s, has spread to over 35 countries across the world. It is now being taught in several universities and it has been applied by a number of global organisations who have found it particularly useful for spurring new product development. However, while its popularity and attractiveness appear to be on a steady increase, there are practical issues which make the use of TRIZ in practice particularly challenging. These practical difficulties have largely been neglected by TRIZ literature. This paper takes a step away from conventional TRIZ literature, by exploring not just the benefits associated with TRIZ knowledge, but the challenges associated with its acquisition and application based on practical experience. Through a survey, first-hand information is collected from people who have tried (successfully and unsuccessfully) to understand and apply the methodology. The challenges recorded cut across a number of issues, ranging from the complex nature of the methodology to underlying organisational and cultural issues which hinder its understanding and application. Another contribution of this paper, potentially useful for TRIZ beginners, is the indication of what tools among the several contained in the TRIZ toolkit would be most useful to learn first, based on their observed degree of usage by the survey respondents. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Impact of Islamic values on HRM practices: an empirical study of Jordanian universities

Purpose This study aims to present an in-depth theoretical and practical analysis of HRM practice in the light of Islamic values and principles. It looks at the four main HRM functions of recruitment and selection, training and development, performance appraisal, and rewards, from the Islamic perspective. Besides establishing a theoretical base for the influence of Islam on HRM, it analyses the key characteristics of HRM practice as applied in Jordanian universities and analyses the extent to which Islamic values are embedded in that practice. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on a structured questionnaire distributed to 500 respondents working in four Jordanian universities which sought to elicit the respondents views on the influence of Islamic values within specific HR functions. Findings The findings indicate that there is a diffusion of Islamic values into HRM practice in the participating organisations. The extent of the diffusion varies between the organisations; there is a clear indication that explicitly Islamic values are being practiced, albeit to a limited extent. Originality/value The role of spirituality and/or religion in shaping the working of contemporary organisations is not sufficiently recognised in the literature. This paper is a response to the limited number of research studies assessing the extent of the absorption of religious values into the management of human resources. The study undertaken examines the current status of HRM practice in Jordanian universities and contributes to deepening the contemporary understanding of interactions between Islamic values and the core HR functions.

Complying with the NIH Public Access Policy - Copyright Considerations and Options

On January 11, 2008, the National Institutes of Health ('NIH') adopted a revised Public Access Policy for peer-reviewed journal articles reporting research supported in whole or in part by NIH funds. Under the revised policy, the grantee shall ensure that a copy of the author's final manuscript, including any revisions made during the peer review process, be electronically submitted to the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central ('PMC') archive and that the person submitting the manuscript will designate a time not later than 12 months after publication at which NIH may make the full text of the manuscript publicly accessible in PMC. NIH adopted this policy to implement a new statutory requirement under which: The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law. This White Paper is written primarily for policymaking staff in universities and other institutional recipients of NIH support responsible for ensuring compliance with the Public Access Policy. The January 11, 2008, Public Access Policy imposes two new compliance mandates. First, the grantee must ensure proper manuscript submission. The version of the article to be submitted is the final version over which the author has control, which must include all revisions made after peer review. The statutory command directs that the manuscript be submitted to PMC 'upon acceptance for publication.' That is, the author's final manuscript should be submitted to PMC at the same time that it is sent to the publisher for final formatting and copy editing. Proper submission is a two-stage process. The electronic manuscript must first be submitted through a process that requires input of additional information concerning the article, the author(s), and the nature of NIH support for the research reported. NIH then formats the manuscript into a uniform, XML-based format used for PMC versions of articles. In the second stage of the submission process, NIH sends a notice to the Principal Investigator requesting that the PMC-formatted version be reviewed and approved. Only after such approval has grantee's manuscript submission obligation been satisfied. Second, the grantee also has a distinct obligation to grant NIH copyright permission to make the manuscript publicly accessible through PMC not later than 12 months after the date of publication. This obligation is connected to manuscript submission because the author, or the person submitting the manuscript on the author's behalf, must have the necessary rights under copyright at the time of submission to give NIH the copyright permission it requires. This White Paper explains and analyzes only the scope of the grantee's copyright-related obligations under the revised Public Access Policy and suggests six options for compliance with that aspect of the grantee's obligation. Time is of the essence for NIH grantees. As a practical matter, the grantee should have a compliance process in place no later than April 7, 2008. More specifically, the new Public Access Policy applies to any article accepted for publication on or after April 7, 2008 if the article arose under (1) an NIH Grant or Cooperative Agreement active in Fiscal Year 2008, (2) direct funding from an NIH Contract signed after April 7, 2008, (3) direct funding from the NIH Intramural Program, or (4) from an NIH employee. In addition, effective May 25, 2008, anyone submitting an application, proposal or progress report to the NIH must include the PMC reference number when citing articles arising from their NIH funded research. (This includes applications submitted to the NIH for the May 25, 2008 and subsequent due dates.) Conceptually, the compliance challenge that the Public Access Policy poses for grantees is easily described. The grantee must depend to some extent upon the author(s) to take the necessary actions to ensure that the grantee is in compliance with the Public Access Policy because the electronic manuscripts and the copyrights in those manuscripts are initially under the control of the author(s). As a result, any compliance option will require an explicit understanding between the author(s) and the grantee about how the manuscript and the copyright in the manuscript are managed. It is useful to conceptually keep separate the grantee's manuscript submission obligation from its copyright permission obligation because the compliance personnel concerned with manuscript management may differ from those responsible for overseeing the author's copyright management. With respect to copyright management, the grantee has the following six options: (1) rely on authors to manage copyright but also to request or to require that these authors take responsibility for amending publication agreements that call for transfer of too many rights to enable the author to grant NIH permission to make the manuscript publicly accessible ('the Public Access License'); (2) take a more active role in assisting authors in negotiating the scope of any copyright transfer to a publisher by (a) providing advice to authors concerning their negotiations or (b) by acting as the author's agent in such negotiations; (3) enter into a side agreement with NIH-funded authors that grants a non-exclusive copyright license to the grantee sufficient to grant NIH the Public Access License; (4) enter into a side agreement with NIH-funded authors that grants a non-exclusive copyright license to the grantee sufficient to grant NIH the Public Access License and also grants a license to the grantee to make certain uses of the article, including posting a copy in the grantee's publicly accessible digital archive or repository and authorizing the article to be used in connection with teaching by university faculty; (5) negotiate a more systematic and comprehensive agreement with the biomedical publishers to ensure either that the publisher has a binding obligation to submit the manuscript and to grant NIH permission to make the manuscript publicly accessible or that the author retains sufficient rights to do so; or (6) instruct NIH-funded authors to submit manuscripts only to journals with binding deposit agreements with NIH or to journals whose copyright agreements permit authors to retain sufficient rights to authorize NIH to make manuscripts publicly accessible.

The eLIDA CAMEL nomadic model of collaborative partnership for a community of practice in design for learning

A nomadic collaborative partnership model for a community of practice (CoP) in Design for Learning (D4L) can facilitate successful innovation and continuing appraisals of effective professional practice, stimulated by a 'critical friend' assigned to the project. This paper reports on e-learning case studies collected by the JISC-funded UK eLIDA CAMEL Design for Learning Project. The project implemented and evaluated learning design (LD) tools in higher and further education within the JISC Design for Learning pedagogic programme (2006-07). Project partners trialled professional user evaluations of innovative e-learning tools with learning design function, collecting D4L case studies and LD sequences in post-16/HE contexts using LAMS and Moodle. The project brought together learning activity sequences within a collaborative e-learning community of practice based on the CAMEL (Collaborative Approaches to the Management of e-Learning) model, contributing to international D4L developments. This paper provides an overview of project outputs in e-learning innovations, including evaluations from teachers and students. The paper explores intentionality in the development of a CoP in design for learning, reporting on trials of LD and social software that bridged tensions between formalised intra-institutional e-learning relationships and inter-institutional professional project team dynamic D4L practitioner interactions. Following a brief report of D4L case studies and feedback, the catalytic role of the 'critical friend' is highlighted and recommended as a key ingredient in the successful development of a nomadic model of communities of practice for managing professional e-learning projects. eLIDA CAMEL Partners included the Association of Learning Technology (ALT), JISC infoNet, three universities and five FE/Sixth Form Colleges. Results reported to JISC demonstrated D4L e-learning innovations by practitioners, illuminated by the role of the 'critical friend'. The project also benefited from formal case study evaluations and the leading work of ALT and JISC infoNet in the development of the CAMEL model.

Fostering 'habits of reflection, independent study and free inquiry': an analysis of the short-lived phenomenon of General/Liberal Studies in English vocational education and training

In 1957, 12 years after the end of World War II, the Ministry of Education issued Circular 323 to promote the development of an element of ‘liberal studies’ in courses offered by technical and further education (FE) colleges in England. This was perceived to be in some ways a peculiar or uncharacteristic development. However, it lasted over 20 years, during which time most students on courses in FE colleges participated in what were termed General or Liberal Studies classes that complemented and/or contrasted with the technical content of their vocational programmes. By the end of the 1970s, these classes had changed in character, moving away from the concept of a ‘liberal education’ towards a prescribed diet of ‘communication studies’. The steady decline in apprenticeship numbers from the late 1960s onwards accelerated in the late 1970s, resulting in a new type of student (the state-funded ‘trainee’) into colleges whose curriculum would be prescribed by the Manpower Services Commission. This paper examines the Ministry’s thinking and charts the rise and fall of a curriculum phenomenon that became immortalised in the ‘Wilt’ novels of Tom Sharpe. The paper argues that the Ministry of Education’s concerns half a century ago are still relevant now, particularly as fresh calls are being made to raise the leaving age from compulsory education to 18, and in light of attempts in England to develop new vocational diplomas for full-time students in schools and colleges.

Heterogeneity, convergence, and autocorrelations

This paper is a contribution to the literature on the explanatory power and calibration of heterogeneous asset pricing models. We set out a new stochastic market-fraction asset pricing model of fundamentalists and trend followers under a market maker. Our model explains key features of financial market behaviour such as market dominance, convergence to the fundamental price and under- and over-reaction. We use the dynamics of the underlying deterministic system to characterize these features and statistical properties, including convergence of the limiting distribution and autocorrelation structure. We confirm these properties using Monte Carlo simulations.

Reception and schooling of children in schools in Catalonia: Beyond Educational Welcome Facilities

The ways of incorporating newcoming students into schools and colleges have been at the center of debate in most OECD countries in recent years. In Spain, the set of measures developed for the reception of immigrant pupils in different Autonomous Communities has also been the subject of specific research, pointing out the similarities and contradictions between pedagogic discourses and school practices. This article takes into account these considerations and presents the reflections from the results of research on the Educational Welcome Facilities (and specifically the EBE) conducted during the school years 2008-2010. This device was created in Catalonia to attend newcomers before enrolling them in the school. It was a pilot project which took place in Vic and Reus for two consecutive years. The research of the EBE has enabled us to explain the relationship between educational assessment that schools made about this facility and reception processes that schools were implementing. The conclusions that emerge from this analysis allowed us to establish relationships between educational host practices of the seven centers analyzed with three different conceptual and educational frameworks of reception.

Barriers to student computer usage: staff and student perceptions

Ensuring that all graduates are able to exploit new technologies is a primary goal of all UK universities and a variety of assumptions have underpinned policies designed to promote this goal, This paper explores some of these assumptions through the findings of a. longitudinal study involving a cohort of over 800 university students. The study adopted a student perspective to examine the factors affecting their use of computers over a three year period. Unsurprisingly, the results indicated that situational factors (e.g. access, training and time) influence the extent to which students use computers, but a disparity was found in the importance attributed to these factors by the academic staff, who focused on the needs of their department, and by the students, who focused on their individual needs. Results suggest that increased attention to a student perspective may lead to improved strategic planning in students' use of computers.

Neoliberalism, the University, Public Goods, and Agricultural Innovation

After World War II, most industrialising nations adopted some form of welfare-state approach to balance the economic activities of self-interested agents and social welfare. In the realm of scientific research and innovation, this often meant that governments took primary responsibility for funding public research organisations, including research universities and government laboratories. Over the past four decades, however, the significance of private funding for agricultural research has increased, and academic scientists now often work in public-private partnerships. We argue that this trend needs to be carefully monitored because public goods are likely to be overlooked and undervalued in such arrangements. In the interest of developing indicators to monitor the trend, we document public and private funding for agricultural research and agricultural innovation in four countries: the USA, the UK, Ireland and Germany. Our results show that although neoliberalism is evident in each country, it is not homogeneous in its application and impacts, suggesting that national and institutional contexts matter. This article is directed at stimulating debates on the relationships between university research, agricultural innovation and public goods.

Adaptive utilitarianism, social enterprises and urban regeneration

Social enterprises have been placed at the centre of Big Society politics and an emphasis on the local as a site for experimentation and service delivery. Nationally, this has been supported by legislation in community transfer and procurement, social finance and new intermediaries to strengthen skills and loan readiness. This paper examines the role of social enterprises involved in urban development in Northern Ireland and highlights the multiple ethics, legitimation strategies and modalities that are necessary for sustainable forms of progressive regeneration. The paper concludes by stressing the possibilities of a more independent and reformist social economy and how this offers some practical alternatives to the enthusiasm for neoliberal policies in the local state.

Improving E-Assessment Systems With A focus On Adaptive Feedback And Marking

Institutions involved in the provision of tertiary education across Europe are feeling the pinch. European universities, and other higher education (HE) institutions, must operate in a climate where the pressure of government spending cuts (Garben, 2012) is in stark juxtaposition to the EU’s strategy to drive forward and maintain a growth of student numbers in the sector (eurostat, 2015).

In order to remain competitive, universities and HE institutions are making ever-greater use of electronic assessment (E-Assessment) systems (Chatzigavriil et all, 2015; Ferrell, 2012). These systems are attractive primarily because they offer a cost-effect and scalable approach for assessment. In addition to scalability, they also offer reliability, consistency and impartiality; furthermore, from the perspective of a student they are most popular because they can offer instant feedback (Walet, 2012).

There are disadvantages, though.

First, feedback is often returned to a student immediately on competition of their assessment. While it is possible to disable the instant feedback option (this is often the case during an end of semester exam period when assessment scores must be can be ratified before release), however, this option tends to be a global ‘all on’ or ‘all off’ configuration option which is controlled centrally rather than configurable on a per-assessment basis.

If a formative in-term assessment is to be taken by multiple groups of
students, each at different times, this restriction means that answers to each question will be disclosed to the first group of students undertaking the assessment. As soon as the answers are released “into the wild” the academic integrity of the assessment is lost for subsequent student groups.

Second, the style of feedback provided to a student for each question is often limited to a simple ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’ indicator. While this type of feedback has its place, it often does not provide a student with enough insight to improve their understanding of a topic that they did not answer correctly.

Most E-Assessment systems boast a wide range of question types including Multiple Choice, Multiple Response, Free Text Entry/Text Matching and Numerical questions. The design of these types of questions is often quite restrictive and formulaic, which has a knock-on effect on the quality of feedback that can be provided in each case.

Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) are most prevalent as they are the most prescriptive and therefore most the straightforward to mark consistently. They are also the most amenable question types, which allow easy provision of meaningful, relevant feedback to each possible outcome chosen.
Text matching questions tend to be more problematic due to their free text entry nature. Common misspellings or case-sensitivity errors can often be accounted for by the software but they are by no means fool proof, as it is very difficult to predict in advance the range of possible variations on an answer that would be considered worthy of marks by a manual marker of a paper based equivalent of the same question.

Numerical questions are similarly restricted. An answer can be checked for accuracy or whether it is within a certain range of the correct answer, but unless it is a special purpose-built mathematical E-Assessment system the system is unlikely to have computational capability and so cannot, for example, account for “method marks” which are commonly awarded in paper-based marking.

From a pedagogical perspective, the importance of providing useful formative feedback to students at a point in their learning when they can benefit from the feedback and put it to use must not be understated (Grieve et all, 2015; Ferrell, 2012).

In this work, we propose a number of software-based solutions, which will overcome the limitations and inflexibilities of existing E-Assessment systems.

The OpenPMU Project: Challenges and perspectives:Challenges and Perspectives

The OpenPMU project is a platform for the development of Synchrophasor measurement technology, Phasor Measurement Units (PMU), in an open source manner. The project has now been operating for a number of years and has seen increased adoption at Universities and interest from electrical utilities. The OpenPMU device has recently been tested against the IEEE C37.118 standard and shown to operate within the specification. This paper discusses the OpenPMU project from the perspective of the past two years of experience and evaluates successes and opportunities for improvements in both the OpenPMU device and the philosophy of the design.

AGREED-UPON PROCEDURES REPORT ON CONTRACT FOR PURCHASE OF NURSING CARE SERVICES WITH STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

The Medicaid Audits Section of the South Carolina Office of the State Auditor performs audits and reviews of cost reports filed by institutional providers of Medicaid services. These cost reports are used by the Health and Human Services Finance Commission to establish amounts to be paid to these providers for services provided to qualified Medicaid recipients. This report deals with A. Sam Karesh Long Term Care Nursing Facility in North Augusta, S.C.