Digital Commons Network^™

Enhancement Of Perceived Quality Of Service For Voice Over Internet Protocol Systems, Zizhi Qiao

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Voice over Internet Protocol (WIP) applications are becoming more and more popular in the telecommunication market. Packet switched V61P systems have many technical advantages over conventional Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), including its efficient and flexible use of the bandwidth, lower cost and enhanced security. However, due to the IP network's "Best Effort" nature, voice quality are not naturally guaranteed in the VoIP services. In fact, most current Vol]P services can not provide as good a voice quality as PSTN. IP Network impairments such as packet loss, delay and jitter affect perceived speech quality as do application layer impairment factors, …

Multi-Modal Task Instructions To Robots By Naive Users, Joerg Christian Wolf

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

This thesis presents a theoretical framework for the design of user-programmable robots. The objective of the work is to investigate multi-modal unconstrained natural instructions given to robots in order to design a learning robot. A corpus-centred approach is used to design an agent that can reason, learn and interact with a human in a natural unconstrained way. The corpus-centred design approach is formalised and developed in detail. It requires the developer to record a human during interaction and analyse the recordings to find instruction primitives. These are then implemented into a robot. The focus of this work has been on …

Organizational Forming: Re(Dis)Covering Hybridization, Paul Donnelly

Conference papers

The topic of organizational form has gained increased attention in the scholarly literature over the past couple of decades or so. Scholars have identified the emergence and evolution of new organizational forms as a critical issue to be addressed. The increased interest and relevance of this topic is often portrayed as ‘new times’ driving the need for new forms, however, what is more evident in the literature is that the need for new ways of looking at organizational form has yet to be addressed. In general, it is my argument that the problem of “organizational form” cannot be addressed by …

Quarter-Wave Metal Plate Solar Antenna, S. Shynu, Max Ammann, Brian Norton

Articles

A novel design of a quarter-wave shorted trapezoidal metal plate solar antenna using high efficiency polycrystalline silicon solar cells is presented. Using the DC conductive parts of the cell as RF antenna elements as well as choosing the radiating element to be a small base trapezoid, better coupling between the feed and shorting plates is ensured and 40.3% size reduction compared to a conventional shorted quarter-wave patch is obtained. The trapezoidal radiating element covers merely 2.7% of the total available illumination area of the solar cell, leaving its efficiency essentially unaffected. The proposed design strategy has been verified by an …

Comparison Of Vacuum Glazing Thermal Performance Predicted Using Two- And Three-Dimensional Models And Their Experimental Validation, Brian Norton, Philip Eames, Yueping Fang, Trevor Hyde, Neil Hewitt

Conference Papers

The thermal performance of vacuum glazing was predicted using two dimensional (2-D) finite element and three dimensional (3-D) finite volume models. In the 2-D model, the vacuum space, including the pillar arrays, was represented by a material whose effective thermal conductivity was determined from the specified vacuum space width, the heat conduction through the pillar array and the calculated radiation heat transfer between the two interior glass surfaces within the vacuum gap. In the 3-D model, the support pillar array was incorporated and modeled within the glazing unit directly. The difference in predicted overall heat transfer coefficients between the two …

Critical Thinking As Disciplinary Practice, Stephen C. Yanchar, Brent D. Slife, Russell Warne

Faculty Publications

Critical thinking in psychology has traditionally focused on method-centered tasks such as the assessment of method use, data analysis, and research evidence. Although helpful in some ways, this form of critical thinking fails to provide resources for critically examining the scientific-analytic foundation on which it rests and, when used exclusively, prohibits sufficiently critical analysis of theory and research. An alternative view of critical thinking—that emphasizes the identification and evaluation of implicit theoretical assumptions—is advocated. It is suggested that this alternative approach improves upon method-centered approaches by addressing not only implicit assumptions but also rule-following concerns. This approach is intended to …

Engineering: An Inherently Philosophical Enterprise, William Grimson

Level 3

This chapter first sets out the arguments for considering engineering from a philosophical point of view with specific reference to the main branches of Philosophy. Additionally within the single branch of Epistemology, the relevance of Empiricism, Rationalism, Existentialism, Logical Positivist, and Post-Modernism to engineering is briefly outlined. The general proposition advanced is that Engineering is itself fundamentally philosophical in nature, attempting in its own way to make sense of the world in which we live.

The Interface Between Academic Knowledge And Working Knowledge: Implications For Curriculum Design And Pedagogic Practice., Anne Murphy

Level 3

This paper considers some aspects of the theory and practice of work-based learning (WBL) that may be of interest to academic staff in higher education who have responsibility for negotiating, designing, delivering and assessing programmes for, and with, Irish workplaces, companies, organisations and sectors of the workforce. The paper does not claim to be breaking significant new ground: rather it is trying to connect aspects of the field to inform underpinning of WBL curriculum design and related pedagogic practice as the start of a conversation rather than the last word.

Masterplan And Masterplan Design Guidelines : 2008, Grangegorman Development Agency

Design/Planning

The GDA determined that in order to articulate the Vision for the Project and to test the project viability a comprehensive spatial masterplan of the highest standard needed to be developed. A spatial masterplan is a sophisticated model which:

• Shows how streets, squares and open spaces of a neighbourhood are to be connected.
• Defines the height, bulk and massing of buildings.
• Sets out suggested relationships between buildings and public spaces.
• Identifies the movement patterns for people on foot, or by bicycle, car or public transport, as well as looking at the needs of service and refuse vehicles.
• Sets out the …

Activity Systems Within Blended Problem-Based Learning In Academic Professional Development, Roisin Donnelly

Journal Articles

Blending face-to-face and online problem-based learning environments presents opportunities for both learners and lecturers to take part in collaborative knowledge construction. Activity theory is a suitable framework to investigate such environments and the learning processes that both sets of participants experience when engaging in these complementary environments. This paper attempts to map out the potential for activity systems using a blended problem-based learning approach through the exploration of an accredited academic staff development programme in Ireland. Firstly, an analysis of tool use and the discourse that participants and tutors engage in is presented. Secondly, tutor reflections about the evolution of …

Encouraging Student Creativity In Higher Education, Roisin Donnelly, Terry Barrett

Journal Articles

This chapter focuses on how teachers encourage the development of creative states of flow in their students and in themselves. The chapter aims to stimulate educators in higher education to think freshly about creativity and to widen their range of strategies for encouraging student creativity.

Linguatag: An Emotional Speech Analysis Application, Charlie Cullen, Brian Vaughan, Spyros Kousidis

Conference papers

The analysis of speech, particularly for emotional content, is an open area of current research. Ongoing work has developed an emotional speech corpus for analysis, and defined a vowel stress method by which this analysis may be performed. This paper documents the development of LinguaTag, an open source speech analysis software application which implements this vowel stress emotional speech analysis method developed as part of research into the acoustic and linguistic correlates of emotional speech. The analysis output is contained within a file format combining SMIL and SSML markup tags, to facilitate search and retrieval methods within an emotional speech …

Augmented Control Of Hands Free Voice Prostheses, Brian Madden, James Condron, Ted Burke, Eugene Coyle

Conference Papers

Laryngectomy patients often use an electrolarynx to facilitate speech following a tracheotomy. Devices of this type provide the most intelligible means of communication for tracheotomy patients. However, the electro-larynx has inherent drawbacks such as the buzzing monotonic sound emitted, the need for a free hand to operate the device, and the difficulty experienced by many tracheotomy patients in adapting to use it. The most effective means of addressing the shortcomings of existing electro-larynges is to provide the user with a hands-free facility. This allows the user to perform other manual tasks whilst speaking, or simply to communicate more effectively through …

Communication Of Medical Information Using Agents, John Mcgrory, Jane Grimson, Frank Clarke, Peter Gaffney

Conference Papers

Agents are self-contained software entities which act faithfully and autonomously on behalf of a body of knowledge. They can operate in a standalone capacity, or as part of a social group collaborating and

coordinating activities with other software agents. To access their knowledge, agents are interfaced with

using message passing communication. The principle behind medical communications is to provide a means

for exchanging information and knowledge from one computerised location to another, whilst preserving its

true meaning and understanding between the listener and sender. Agent communication is similar to medical

communications, but must provide an additional framework element to allow …

Revenue Maximisation; An Examination Of The Influences Of Heuristics And Biases On The Yield Management Decision Process In Dublin Hotels, Tony Kiely

Conference papers

Yield management in hotels has been described as a method of profitably managing fixed room capacity. A critical element of yield management is the decision strategy employed, as this determines the degree to which optimum financial solutions are generated. Recent research has indicated that the use of technology assisted decision optimising models, specifically the management science model of decision making, would greatly improve decision optimisation, by minimising the need to employ guesswork in achieving financial goals. However, despite this assurance, yield management remains couched in uncertainty through being inextricably associated with forecasting future demand for a perishable product in an …

A Translation Mechanism For Recommendations, Pierpaolo Dondio, Luca Longo, Stephen Barrett

Conference papers

An important class of distributed Trust-based solutions is based on the information sharing. A basic requirement of such systems is the ability of participating agents to effectively communicate, receiving and sending messages that can be interpreted correctly. Unfortunately, in open systems it is not possible to postulate a common agreement about the representation of a rating, its semantic meaning and cognitive and computational mechanisms behind a trust-rating formation. Social scientists agree to consider unqualified trust values not transferable, but a more pragmatic approach would conclude that qualified trust judgments are worth being transferred as far as decisions taken considering others’ …

Knowledge Visualisation Of Wikipedia, Jinhui Wang

Dissertations

Wikipedia is a popular online encyclopaedia, in which articles are created together by anyone who is willing to contribute. There is debate on the quality, reliability and consistency of articles due to its openness. Besides, it is hard to see the growing path of articles because there is no centralised control in Wikipedia. The history of articles is available but in form that is difficult to process to get a picture of article evolution. Knowledge visualisation addresses the problem by providing analysis and comprehension of large amounts of data to gain insights and to facilitate knowledge creation and sharing. However, …

Building Organisationally Sensitive Technological Solutions For Knowledge Management In It Support Services, David Tonade

Dissertations

With the advent of the internet, information and communications technology has changed the way organisations operate and do business. There now exist an extremely dynamic and competitive business landscape, where information and knowledge are continuously created, used and distributed across business units. People have become more involved with the use of technology to aid them in their business tasks. In the course of generating and transmitting information comes the realization that knowledge is a vital asset of the company. Thus, most firms embark on various initiatives to enable Knowledge Management (KM). This study revolves around the IT tools involved in …

Assessing The Impact Of Organisational Culture When Introducing Web.2.0 Technologies Into A Non-Profit Organisation For Knowledge Managment, Heather Madden

Dissertations

Some of the key challenges that any organisation faces today are those of knowledge sharing and collaboration. This research investigates knowledge sharing in existing communities of practice in a non-profit organisation and the challenges that are faced by attempting to facilitate online interactions for these communities. Organisation culture can either incentivise or impede this process and this research will describe how people and culture are two of the most important factors when considering a knowledge management initiative. Given that the impact of culture is such a key issue, a number of organisations are interviewed and evaluated to compare and contrast …

2008 - 2009 : Dit Staff Handbook, Dublin Institute Of Technology

DIT Publications

Booklet or staff containing general information on support services, central services, student services and faculties and campus.

Marriage And Finance, Jeffrey P. Dew

Faculty Publications

This chapter reviews interdisciplinary research concerning the association between marriage and personal finances. The first section of the chapter discusses financial practices within marriage and the financial differences between married couples and other family types. The second section reviews the research on the ability of financial factors to predict marital formation, satisfaction/conflict, and dissolution. The chapter also suggests future research avenues.

The Focas Institute At Dit : Origins And Development Of A Research Institute, Hugh Byrne, Mary Mcnamara, Matt Hussey

DIT Publications

The book outlines the roots and development of a new scientific research institute called the Focas ( facility for Optical Characterisation and Spectroscopy) within the Dublin Institute of Technology.

Modeling Motor Pattern Generation In The Development Of Infant Speech Production, Is Howard, P Messum

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

We previously proposed a non-imitative account of learning to pronounce, implemented computationally using discovery and mirrored interaction with a caregiver. Our model used an infant vocal tract synthesizer and its articulators were driven by a simple motor system. During an initial phase, motor patterns develop that represent potentially useful speech sounds. To increase the realism of this model we now include some of the constraints imposed by speech breathing. We also implement a more sophisticated motor system. Firstly, this can independently control articulator movement over different timescales, which is necessary to effectively control respiration as well as prosody. Secondly, we …

The Reflective Science Educator, Caroline Anne Scheidel

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Reflection is synonymous with quality teaching. Though teachers reflect, the domains of reflections vary from teachers in different curriculum areas. Teachers of science have their own interesting characteristics to reflection. The art of reflection contains several unique aspects such as the logistics of reflections, the influence of the reflection, the content, and the perception one has on reflection. These aspects are described through the eyes of a science teacher to better understand their relationship to reflection. Though the research within reflections of teachers is plentiful, there is little on science teacher's reflections. The focus of this study is to determine …

Evaluating Earth Science Misconceptions In One School Districts: A Case Study, Katherine Marie Schafer

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This research was a case study in common Earth science misconceptions revealed among students in one rural Iowa school district known as "Ruraltown." Students in grades 5, 8 and 10 participated in this study. Evaluation of misconceptions was done through the administration of the Misconceptions-Oriented Standards-Based Assessment Resources For Teachers (MOSART). MOSART is designed to test for students' understanding of content contained within the K-12 Earth science National Science Education Standards and also to reveal misunderstandings held by students. Three questions guided this research study. One, how do students in this school district compare with students who participated in the …

A Study Of The Level Of Interest Among Adolescents In Physical Education, Brooke N. Davitt

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

There has been an incredible amount attention given to the issue of childhood obesity in America today because the prevalence and incidence rates have grown at alarming rates. When addressing this problem, there are multiple things to consider, (a) diet, (b) exercise, (c) support systems, (d) healthy behavior modification, and ( e) interest toward physical activity. This last item mentioned is of significance for the current study. In this study, adolescent children, ages 11 to 18, were asked to evaluate their interest in physical activity, specifically badminton, volleyball, and HALS Pals, during their physical education class. These children were also …

Technology And Signal Processing For Brain-Machine Interfaces, Justin C. Sanchez, Jose C. Principe, Toshikazu Nishida, Rizwan Bashirullah, John G. Harris, José A.B. Fortes

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) aid disabled humans. BMI systems face challenges such as interfacing with neural tissue, selecting the most appropriate control signals, acquiring data and decoding patient intent in implantable or wearable computers. They must be able to adapt to different variety of behavioral states. Today's hybrid BMI systems consume less power and are made to chronically extract control commands from the nervous system. In terms of signal processing approaches, one challenge for BMI data analysis is learning how to handle large multi-input multi-output systems with signal representations that span continuous and discrete time. BMI systems also need sufficient information …

Guidelines For Deploying Wireless Sensor Network In Manufacturing: Star Topology Study Using The Rssi To Test The Network Performance, A. Hameed Madwar

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are varying in kinds and can be used for many purposes. It can be extensively used in monitoring, reporting, and decision routines. Therefore, WSNs are very important to integrate with manufacturing since they can help not only in monitoring and decision making but also they can increase productivity and decrease the wiring costs. However, WSNs are facing some challenges in manufacturing as they need to resist the interferences that could be generated by the electrical and mechanical fields created during the manufacturing processes. Some of these interferences could be due to the high temperatures, blocks of …

An Expression Profile Of Cadherin-11 In Developing Chicken Embryos, Kacie Flaherty

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The properties of cadherin-11 adhesiveness allow it to play a dynamic role in development. Known primarily as a mesenchymal cadherin, cadherin-11 expression may be correlated with morphogenetic events in developing embryos. Although cadherin-11 expression has been studied in the mouse and Xenopus, its expression pattern in the important avian model has not been described. We investigated cadherin-11 's expression profile using a monoclonal antibody in fluorescence immunolocalization, assisted by microwave antigen retrieval; in Hamburger-Hamilton stages 13-22 chicken embryos (approx. 46-96 hrs). Cadherin-11 was expressed in mesenchymal tissue surrounding the eye, pharynx and aortic arches, auditory vesicles, lung buds and stomach, …

Web-Based Service Exchange System For Agents And Humans Alike, Evens Jean, Machigar Ongtang, A. R. Hurson

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Semantic Web research aims at bridging the gap between how humans and agents process information readily available on the Internet. One of the great challenges to this goal lies in the fact that humans, contrary to agents, can extract the meaning of words based on its context. This work introduces a service exchange system for the Web that allows agents to intelligently process information, as would humans. This is achieved by the use of thesauri to help agents resolve semantic heterogeneity in the information being processed. The framework for the exchange system has been realized under the aglet platform on …