Abstract

The paper argues that the above well-proven international experience, be adopted urgently by Indian higher and technical education institutes, so essential for global competitiveness and to win in world competition.

Abstract

Technology Management is the capacity of a firm, a group or society to master management of the factors that condition technology change so as to improve its economic, social and cultural environment and wealth. The factors that make up the technological framework are its objective, decision criteria, time, constraints, activities and mechanisms. Technology develops business by providing technical knowledge for the goods and services that the firm produces. Managing technology means using new technology to create competitive advantage, which is quite a difficult job, partly due to differing cultures in a company.

Technology Assessment is a form of policy research, which provides a balanced appraisal to the policy maker. It is the process of taking a purposeful look at the consequences of technological change. Ideally, it is a system that identifies policy issues assesses the impact of alternative courses of analysis that systematically appraises the nature, significance status and merit of technological progress.

Technology Forecasting is the totality of the means employs to provide objects necessary for human existence and comfort. This refers to the techniques and procedures to accomplish some desired human processes. The paper gives the deep insights of the technological aspects, its issues related to the forecasting, development, change and adoption of the technology with the Indian economic, social and cultural scenario.

Abstract

'Nanotechnology' is a hybrid science combining engineering, information technology, chemistry and biology. The goal of Nanotechnology is to manipulate atoms individually at nanoscale dimensions. It is not just a miniaturization process but also a 'bottom-up' manufacturing approach of building atoms by atoms using Molecular assemblers. The need of the hour is to build a molecular assembler. Nano-scientists all over the world are advancing towards that direction. Implicit applications of this emerging technology are infinite, ranging from Supercomputing, Raising the dead, Stain-resistant fabrics, Painless surgeries, Ensuring a clean environment etc.

Abstract

Here is such a characteristic example. 40 Higher Education students were asked which technical characteristics of a hyperboloid they knew. Each remembered the essence of the mathematical definitions, some even referred to the construction of V.G. Shukhov's tower... but that was all. But the hyperboloid, like any other geometric figure, has a wealth of useful creative applications in technology.

Abstract

It has been observed that the abilities of mathematics of students entering universities in Sri Lanka are on the decline in recent years. Also there is a school of thought which cultivates the belief that it is sufficient to teach mathematics only as a tool to the extent that it could be used only for certain computations arising in their work. It appears that the teaching of mathematics to engineering students follow this policy in many countries around the world. This paper critically analyses this trend and its repercussions are also discussed in relation to the experience gained at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Peradeniya, Sri lanka.

Abstract

A great number of the recent changes in engineering design education have been introduced to reflect the need for more engineering applications in engineering degree programmes in UK universities. These changes include final year projects based engineering design education, group projects and industrially supported live projects. These listed changes have brought about many benefits, however they have also raised many new problems. One of these particular problems is how to incorporate the concept of 'design for safety' into engineering design education. This paper presents the development of the incorporated 'design for safety' into engineering design programmes. The described developments are based on a common philosophy, occurred at engineering design programmes in UK universities. The author offers his reflections, from his different perspectives on the implementation of these novel measures, together with pointers to enhance both design education and need of industry in the future. The aim of this paper is to provide a recommendation for developing and improving higher education in engineering design.

Abstract

Autotutor combines a talking head with research in discourse and tutoring dialogs. The most novel is the use of Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), a statistical technique that can estimate the similarity between two pieces of text. By developing databases of good and bad expected answers, and comparing the similarity of student responses to these expected responses, the tutoring system can produce a type of dialog of human tutors in guiding and correcting students in learning. One of the keys is the system capability to provide the learner with a personalized, adaptive effective teaching. In order to develop such an agent, Autotutor trained a feed-forward, backpropagation neural network to predict the number of errors a student will make. The achieved prediction accuracy is high, showing that a neural network is capable of making such predictions.

Abstract

The kinetic behavior of a fixed-bed adsorber can be explained and the characteristic breakthrough curve of the adsorption phenomena can be obtained through mathematical models. In the earlier models, the kinetics is explained using a mathematical model that takes into account of external and internal mass-transfer resistances with a nonideal plug flow behavior. The variation of fluid velocity along the column is an important aspect, which has not been accounted so far. In the present study, a mathematical model is proposed for explaining the kinetic behavior of adsorption phenomena incorporating the fluid velocity variation along the column length also. Internal mass-transfer resistances due to pore diffusion mechanism are considered in the model. The proposed mathematical model for fixed-bed adsorption is solved numerically and compared with earlier model reported in literature. The results show that the breakpoint is obtained earlier which represents the realistic behavior in adsorption phenomena. Initially the sharp front of the breakthrough curve is seen followed by broadening of tail of the breakthrough curve. Simulations are carried out using the present model for a systematic parametric study. The effects of various important and influencing parameters such as flow rate, bed height, inlet adsorbate concentration and particle diameter on breakthrough curve are studied in detail.

Abstract

This paper presents an image processing technique in order to predict the shape of a levitated aspherical droplet. The technique is of great importance to containerless materials processing. A majority of the electromagnetic levitation techniques utilizes two cameras at right angles to observe both transversal and frontal views. This allows obtaining two images of the droplet at instant time. In many cases, the portion of the frontal image is missing due to the heating coil. The newly developed technique allows restoration of the missing portion of the image information. The through image can be reconstructed by combining the recovered shapes. A special computer program is generated to simulate a normalized volume of the droplet.

Abstract

Recently cyber security has emerged as an established discipline for computer systems and infrastructures with a focus on protection of valuable information stored on those systems from adversaries who want to obtain, corrupt, damage, destroy or prohibit access to it. Several information security techniques are available today to protect information systems against unauthorized use, duplication, alteration, destruction and virus attacks. An Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is a program that analyzes what happens or has happened during an execution and tries to find indications that the computer has been misused. This article presents some of the challenges in designing efficient intrusion detection systems which could provide high accuracy, low false alarm rate and reduced number of features. Finally, we present how some of the computational intelligence paradigms could be used in designing intrusion detection systems in a distributed environment.