Teaching Communications, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities with Multimedia: A University-Middle School Service-Learning Project

Se describe el uso de tecnología en forma de presentaciones de multimedia para facilitar la enseñanza de las Normas para el Aprendizaje de una Lengua Extranjera del Concilio Americano para la Enseñanza de Lenguas extranjeras. Las normas abarcan las comunicaciones, las culturas, las conexiones, las comparaciones y las comunidades. El estudiantado universitario aprende a crear, con multimedia, presentaciones sobre un tema cultural en la lengua meta. El componente de aprendizaje por servicio comunitario se fundamenta en las presentaciones creadas para estudiantes de colegio, quienes tienen acceso a las presentaciones en un sitio web de la universidad.A description is provided of how the use of technology in the form of multimedia presentations enhances the teaching of the Five C Standards for Foreign Language Learning of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages: communications, cultures, connections, comparisons, and communities. University students learn to create multimedia presentations on a cultural topic in the target language. The service-learning component provides the multimedia presentations for middle-school students who access them from the university website.

How to observe : architecture : or, questions upon various subjects connected therewith, suggested for the direction of correspondents and travellers, and for the purpose of eliciting uniformity of observation and intelligence in their communications to the Institute /

Mode of access: Internet.

A new physarum network based genetic algorithm for bandwidth-delay constrained least-cost multicast routing

Bandwidth-delay constrained least-cost multicast routing is a typical NP-complete problem. Although some swarm-based intelligent algorithms (e.g., genetic algorithm (GA)) are proposed to solve this problem, the shortcomings of local search affect the computational effectiveness. Taking the ability of building a robust network of Physarum network model (PN), a new hybrid algorithm, Physarum network-based genetic algorithm (named as PNGA), is proposed in this paper. In PNGA, an updating strategy based on PN is used for improving the crossover operator of traditional GA, in which the same parts of parent chromosomes are reserved and the new offspring by the Physarum network model is generated. In order to estimate the effectiveness of our proposed optimized strategy, some typical genetic algorithms and the proposed PNGA are compared for solving multicast routing. The experiments show that PNGA has more efficient than original GA. More importantly, the PNGA is more robustness that is very important for solving the multicast routing problem.

A truthful double auction for device-to-device communications in cellular networks

Data traffic in cellular networks has dramatically increased in recent years as the emergence of various new wireless applications, which imposes an immediate requirement for large network capacity. Although many efforts have been made to enhance wireless channel capacity, they are far from solving the network capacity enhancement problem. Device-to-Device (D2D) communication is recently proposed as a promising technique to increase network capacity. However, most existing work on D2D communications focuses on optimizing throughput or energy efficiency, without considering economic issues. In this paper, we propose a truthful double auction for D2D communications (TAD) in multi-cell cellular networks for trading resources in frequencytime domain, where cellular users with D2D communication capability act as sellers, and other users waiting to access the network act as buyers. Both intra-cell and inter-cell D2D sellers are accommodated in TAD while the competitive space in each cell is extensively exploited to achieve a high auction efficiency. With a sophisticated seller-buyer matching, winner determination and pricing, TAD guarantees individual rationality, budget balance, and truthfulness. Furthermore, we extend our TAD design to handle a more general case that each seller and buyer ask/bid multiple resource units. Extensive simulation results show that TAD can achieve truthfulness as well as high performance in terms of seller/buyer sanctification ratio, auctioneer profit and network throughput.

A new genetic algorithm based on modified Physarum network model for bandwidth-delay constrained least-cost multicast routing

A mobile ad hoc network is a kind of popular self-configuring network, in which multicast routing under the quality of service constraints, is a significant challenge. Many researchers have proved that such problem can be formulated as a NP-complete problem and proposed some swarm-based intelligent algorithms to solve the optimal solution, such as the genetic algorithm (GA), bees algorithm. However, a lower efficiency of local search ability and weak robustness still limit the computational effectiveness. Aiming to those shortcomings, a new hybrid algorithm inspired by the self-organization of Physarum, is proposed in this paper. In our algorithm, an updating scheme based on Physarum network model (PM) is used for improving the crossover operator of traditional GAs, in which the same parts of parent chromosomes are reserved and the new offspring by the PM is generated. In order to estimate the effectiveness of our proposed optimized scheme, some typical genetic algorithms and their updating algorithms (PMGAs) are compared for solving the multicast routing on four different datasets. The simulation experiments show that PMGAs are more efficient than original GAs. More importantly, the PMGAs are more robustness that is very important for solving the multicast routing problem. Moreover, a series of parameter analyses is used to find a set of better setting for realizing the maximal efficiency of our algorithm.

An investigation into the perceived quality of communications in dispersed construction project teams

Construction project teams are increasingly operating in dispersed arrangements in which communications predominantly take place via information communication technology (ICT) with a dose of face-to-face interactions. However, a review of literature reflects a scarcity of research on how shifting to dispersed teams affects the perceived quality of communications in construction project teams. The present study attempts to address such a gap in the body of knowledge. To this end, 12 major indicators of quality of communications were identified through a review of literature. This was followed by conducting 17 semi-structured interviews with experts in the industry to customize the indicators for the construction context. Based on the identified indicators, a questionnaire survey was designed for elucidating the perceptions of construction practitioners about changes in quality of communications in dispersed teams in comparison to fully collocated ones. Drawing upon the data collated from 285 duly completed questionnaires, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was deployed to define the major areas of change in quality of communications in dispersed teams as perceived by the respondents. The findings showed that shifting towards dispersed working results in a change in perceived quality of communications in ten areas mainly reduction in completeness and reliability of communications. The present study contributes to the field by providing a list of indicators for assessing the quality of communications for construction project teams. Additionally, the findings provide an illuminating insight into the primary changes in perceived quality of communications in disperse team arrangements.

Weakly-constrained codes for suppression of patterning effects in digital communications

We propose weakly-constrained stream and block codes with tunable pattern-dependent statistics and demonstrate that the block code capacity at large block sizes is close to the the prediction obtained from a simple Markov model published earlier. We demonstrate the feasibility of the code by presenting original encoding and decoding algorithms with a complexity log-linear in the block size and with modest table memory requirements. We also show that when such codes are used for mitigation of patterning effects in optical fibre communications, a gain of about 0.5dB is possible under realistic conditions, at the expense of small redundancy (≈10%). © 2010 IEEE

Self-affirmation before exposure to health communications promotes intentions and health behavior change by increasing anticipated regret

Health-risk information can elicit negative emotions like anticipated regret that may positively affect health persuasion. The beneficial impact of such emotions is undermined when target audiences respond defensively to the threatening information. We tested whether self-affirming (reflecting on cherished attributes) before message exposure can be used as strategy to enhance the experience of anticipated regret. Women were self-affirmed or not before exposure to a message promoting fruit and vegetable consumption. Self-affirmation increased anticipated regret and intentions reported following message exposure and consumption in the week after the intervention; regret mediated the affirmation effect on intentions. Moreover, results suggest that anticipated regret and intentions are serial mediators linking self-affirmation and behavior. By demonstrating the mediating role of anticipated regret, we provide insights into how self-affirmation may promote healthy intentions and behavior following health message exposure. Self-affirmation techniques could thus potentially be used to increase the effectiveness of health communication efforts.

Measuring QoS in an aeronautical opportunistic network architecture with limited access to a satellite communications backhaul

We measure quality of service (QoS) in a wireless network architecture of transoceanic aircraft. A distinguishing characteristic of the network scheme we analyze is that it mixes the concept of Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) through the exploitation of opportunistic contacts, together with direct satellite access in a limited number of the nodes. We provide a graph sparsification technique for deriving a network model that satisfies the key properties of a real aeronautical opportunistic network while enabling scalable simulation. This reduced model allows us to analyze the impact regarding QoS of introducing Internet-like traffic in the form of outgoing data from passengers. Promoting QoS in DTNs is usually really challenging due to their long delays and scarce resources. The availability of satellite communication links offers a chance to provide an improved degree of service regarding a pure opportunistic approach, and therefore it needs to be properly measured and quantified. Our analysis focuses on several QoS indicators such as delivery time, delivery ratio, and bandwidth allocation fairness. Obtained results show significant improvements in all metric indicators regarding QoS, not usually achievable on the field of DTNs.

Significant Attributes and Challenges Related to Cross-Functional Team Communications

Purpose The purpose of the research work is to investigate the importance of the communication in the cross-functional teams and in what which communicational tools provide better convenience of communication in cross-functional team members. Methodology An empirical study including the data collection from the interviews conducted from the participants working in cross-functional teams. Qualitative approach has been adopted to understand the communicational attributes in the cross-functional teams. For the analysis both deductive and abductive approach has been used. With the help of theoretical framework and empirical data, conclusions drown for better understanding of the concept. Findings The author has divided the search in two main segments, communicational effects on cross-functional team performance and effectiveness of particular communicational tools used by team members and team leaders. Empirical findings shows that without proper communication, cross-functional team are less tend to perform well to achieve set goals as well as face to face communications are more effective than other communicational tools.  Research limitations The research work is limited to Scandinavian countries. Organizational communicational structures are not studied due to time factor. Other limitation of this research work is effect of cultural differences on communication. Implications The research work provides deep understanding of the different communicational effects on cross-functional team performance. The choice of communicational tool and proportional importance for the team members will help managers while selecting the tools of communication with the team members. Originality / value During the literature studies, author determined that there is potential of research for the communicational tools used in cross-functional team communications. The social media is taking over the traditional communicational tools which provide value for findings. 

Machine-to-machine communications with in-network data aggregation, processing, and actuation for large-scale cyber-physical systems

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) paradigm enables machines (sensors, actuators, robots, and smart meter readers) to communicate with each other with little or no human intervention. M2M is a key enabling technology for the cyber-physical systems (CPSs). This paper explores CPS beyond M2M concept and looks at futuristic applications. Our vision is CPS with distributed actuation and in-network processing. We describe few particular use cases that motivate the development of the M2M communication primitives tailored to large-scale CPS. M2M communications in literature were considered in limited extent so far. The existing work is based on small-scale M2M models and centralized solutions. Different sources discuss different primitives. Few existing decentralized solutions do not scale well. There is a need to design M2M communication primitives that will scale to thousands and trillions of M2M devices, without sacrificing solution quality. The main paradigm shift is to design localized algorithms, where CPS nodes make decisions based on local knowledge. Localized coordination and communication in networked robotics, for matching events and robots, were studied to illustrate new directions.

Inquiry into broadcasting, online content and live production to rural and regional Australia : submission 19. Deakin University submission to Standing Committee on Communications and the Arts

Deakin University's submission to the inquiry into 'Bringing the arts, news and other services to rural and regional Australia' by the Standing Committee on Communications and the Arts of the Parliament of Australia. The submission was one of fifty-five submissions and twelve supplementary submissions presented to the committee. The article contributed to the final report 'Arts and the news to rural and regional Australia: inquiry into broadcasting, online content and live production to rural and regional Australia’ published by The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia.