Evaluation of Technical Education by Using a Modern Structured MOODLE Laboratory Course, in Relation to Recent Data

E-learning platforms support education systems worldwide, transferring theoretical knowledge as well as soft skills. In the present study high-school pupils’, and adult students’ opinions were evaluated through a modern structured MOODLE interactive course, designed for the needs of the laboratory course “Automotive Systems”. The study concerns Greek secondary vocational education pupils aged 18 and vocational training adult students aged 20 to 50 years. The multistage, equal size simple random cluster sample was used as a sampling method. Pupils and adult students of each cluster completed structured 10-question questionnaires both before and after attending the course. A total of 120 questionnaires were collected. In general, our findings disclosed that the majority of pupils and adult students had significantly improved their knowledge and skills from using MOODLE. They reported strengthening conventional teaching, using the new MOODLE technology. The satisfaction indices improved quite, with the differences in their mean values being statistically significant.

Application of H~∞ control in rudder/flap vector robust control of a ship's course

Given the uncertainty of parameters and the random nature of disturbances that effect a ships course, a robust course controller should be designed on the basis of rudder/flap vector control. This paper analyzes system uncertainty, and the choice of weighting functions is also discussed. When sea waves operate on a ship, the energy-concentrating frequency varies with the angle of encounter. For different angles of encounter, different weighting functions are designed. For the pole of a nominal model existing in an imaginary axis, the bilinear-transform method is used. The "2-Riccati" equation is adopted to solve the H∞ controller. A system simulation is given, and the results show that, compared with a PID controller, this system has higher course precision and more robust performance. This research has significant engineering value.

The Reform and Practice of Bilingual Teaching in Computer Courses

Since China has joined the WTO and the speed of globalization in our country.The professionals with both up to date technological knowledge and good English are needed urgently.It has been shown that bilingual teaching in IT fields is effect ways of cultivating IT professionals.In this paper,the necessity of bilingual teaching in IT fields is discussed and some of the methods in our practices are also introduced.The satisfactory results of the bilingual teaching in computer courses at our school have been obtained.

Prediction of disease course in inflammatory bowel diseases

Clinical presentation at diagnosis and disease course of both Crohn's disease(CD) and ulcerative colitis are heterogeneous and variable over time.Since most patients have a relapsing course and most CD patients develop complications(e.g.stricture and/or perforation),much emphasis has been placed in the recent years on the determination of important predictive factors.The identification of these factors may eventually lead to a more personalized,tailored therapy.In this TOPIC HIGHLIGHT series,we provide an update on the available literature regarding important clinical,endoscopic,fecal,serological/routine laboratory and genetic factors.Our aim is to assist clinicians in the everyday practical decisionmaking when choosing the treatment strategy for their patients suffering from inflammatory bowel diseases.

Is early limited surgery associated with a more benign disease course in Crohn's disease?

AIM:To analyze the difference in disease course and need for surgery in patients with Crohn’s disease(CD).METHODS:Data of 506 patients with incident CD were analyzed(age at diagnosis:31.5±13.8 years).Both hospital and outpatient records were collected prospectively with a complete clinical follow-up and comprehensively reviewed in the population-based Veszprem province database,which includes incident CD patients diagnosed between January 1,1977 and December 31,2008.Follow-up data were collected until December 31,2009.All patients included had at least 1year of follow-up available.Patients with indeterminate colitis at diagnosis were excluded from the analysis.RESULTS:Overall,73 patients(14.4%)required resective surgery within 1 year of diagnosis.Steroid exposure and need for biological therapy were lower in patients with early limited surgery(P<0.001 and P=0.09).In addition,surgery rates during follow-up in patients with and without early surgery differed significantly after matching on propensity scores(P<0.001,HR=0.23).The need for reoperation was also lower in patients with early limited resective surgery(P=0.038,HR=0.42)in a Kaplan-Meier and multivariate Cox regression(P=0.04)analysis.However,this advantage was not observed after matching on propensity scores(PLogrank=0.656,PBreslow=0.498).CONCLUSION:Long-term surgery rates and overall exposure to steroids and biological agents were lower in patients with early limited resective surgery,but reoperation rates did not differ.

Unmanned Ship Identification Based on Improved YOLOv8s Algorithm

Aiming at defects such as low contrast in infrared ship images,uneven distribution of ship size,and lack of texture details,which will lead to unmanned ship leakage misdetection and slow detection,this paper proposes an infrared ship detection model based on the improved YOLOv8 algorithm(R_YOLO).The algorithm incorporates the Efficient Multi-Scale Attention mechanism(EMA),the efficient Reparameterized Generalized-feature extraction module(CSPStage),the small target detection header,the Repulsion Loss function,and the context aggregation block(CABlock),which are designed to improve the model’s ability to detect targets at multiple scales and the speed of model inference.The algorithm is validated in detail on two vessel datasets.The comprehensive experimental results demonstrate that,in the infrared dataset,the YOLOv8s algorithm exhibits improvements in various performance metrics.Specifically,compared to the baseline algorithm,there is a 3.1%increase in mean average precision at a threshold of 0.5(mAP(0.5)),a 5.4%increase in recall rate,and a 2.2%increase in mAP(0.5:0.95).Simultaneously,while less than 5 times parameters,the mAP(0.5)and frames per second(FPS)exhibit an increase of 1.7%and more than 3 times,respectively,compared to the CAA_YOLO algorithm.Finally,the evaluation indexes on the visible light data set have shown an average improvement of 4.5%.

Is the disease course predictable in inflammatory bowel diseases?

During the course of the disease,most patients with Crohn's disease(CD) may eventually develop a stricturing or a perforating complication,and a significant number of patients with both CD and ulcerative colitis will undergo surgery.In recent years,research has focused on the determination of factors important in the prediction of disease course in inflammatory bowel diseases to improve stratification of patients,identify individual patient profiles,including clinical,laboratory and molecular markers,which hopefully will allow physicians to choose the most appropriate management in terms of therapy and intensity of follow-up.This review summarizes the available evidence on clinical,endoscopic variables and biomarkers in the prediction of short and long-term outcome in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases.

Inflammatory bowel disease course in Crohn's disease:Is the natural history changing?

Crohn&#x02019;s disease (CD) is a multifactorial potentially debilitating disease. It has a variable disease course, but the majority of patients eventually develop penetrating or stricturing complications leading to repeated surgeries and disability. Studies on the natural history of CD provide invaluable data on its course and clinical predictors, and may help to identify patient subsets based on clinical phenotype. Most data are available from referral centers, however these outcomes may be different from those in population-based cohorts. New data suggest the possibility of a change in the natural history in Crohn&#x02019;s disease, with an increasing percentage of patients diagnosed with inflammatory disease behavior. Hospitalization rates remain high, while surgery rates seem to have decreased in the last decade. In addition, mortality rates still exceed that of the general population. The impact of changes in treatment strategy, including increased, earlier use of immunosuppressives, biological therapy, and patient monitoring on the natural history of the disease are still conflictive. In this review article, the authors summarize the available evidence on the natural history, current trends, and predictive factors for evaluating the disease course of CD.

On the Significance of Saussure's Course in General Linguistics

Saussure, the greatest linguist in the 20^(th) century, is the founder of modern linguistics, semiology as well as structuralism linguistics. Moreover, his ideas have have influenced a great number of linguists in the last ninety years. This paper aims to present and comment on some of his ideas in one of this masterworks—Course in General Linguistics. In the end, the author proposes some suggestions for further study.

A Software Engineering Project Course for Undergraduate Students

Software engineering(SE) courses are confronted with predicaments how to cultivate students' engineering concept and how to abridge the distance between the academy and industry.The "Computing and Software Engineering,III(CSE III)" helps students mimic a real-world software development and broaden realworld SE view.With the spiral model as the main development model,the CSE III course includes not only the SE theory knowledge,but also quick learning,team cooperation,development management and risk management skills which meet the real-world industry requirements.Our contribution is providing an introductory course for multiple dimensions of knowledge,creating a real-world software development circumstance for students under quantitative control and designing a systematic and practical evaluation mechanism which stimulates the interests of students.CSE III has been executed from 2009 and obtains a valuable teaching and learning effects among our teachers,TAs and students;and we add refinements to the course according to feedbacks of participants.This paper will describe the design and practice of the CSE III course.

Research on Website Construction of Quality Course based on Network Teaching Platform

through the teaching design of online course quality and application practice, the instructional design process based on B/S learning are analyzed, and discusses several key problems in the design and teaching. The proposed resource-based learning teaching design network course should adapt to the application mode of network teaching and traditional classroom combination; will provide teaching demonstration, teaching content self testing evaluation for students, and to provide jobs for teachers management, online Q ＆ A, BBS, database and knowledge construction and other functions, greatly improving the efficiency of teaching ＂excellent course＂ .

Since Reform and Opening the Change Course of People＇s Congress System

Since the reform and opening up, people＇ s congress system has gone through four stages of development, is to restore respectively, the initial development, further strengthen and improve, deepen the development stage. From four stages of development, we can draw the four laws since the reform and opening up people＇ s congress system changes that adhere to the party＇ s leadership, adapt to changes in the economic system, in theory and in practice, innovation in the legal, institutional design and constantly improve the standard. Four stages and the four laws draw people＇ s congress system experiences, the study of people＇ s congress system in future developments of great significance.

Concept and Feasibility of Offering Human Rights Courses in China's Institutions of Higher Learning

Doubtlessly, the term ＂human rights＂ has become a world language in the 21st century. China has written ＂The state respects and protects human rights＂ into its constitution, thus opening up a new period of constitutional construction and human rights cause. This great term ＂human rights＂ does not only contain specific rights that can be put into practice but also carry dignity, equality, freedom and other value systems and moral requirements.

Terminal Sliding Mode Fuzzy Control Based on Multiple Sliding Surfaces for Nonlinear Ship Autopilot Systems

A terminal sliding mode fuzzy control based on multiple sliding surfaces was proposed for ship course tracking steering, which takes account of rudder characteristics and parameter uncertainty. In order to solve the problem, the controller was designed by employing the universal approximation property of fuzzy logic system, the advantage of Nussbaum function, and using multiple sliding mode control algorithm based on the recursive technique. In the last step of designing, a nonsingular terminal sliding mode was utilized to drive the last state of the system to converge in a finite period of time, and high-order sliding mode control law was designed to eliminate the chattering and make the system robust. The simulation results showed that the controller designed here could track a desired course fast and accurately. It also exhibited strong robustness peculiarly to system, and had better adaptive ability than traditional PID control algorithms.

A Non-geometrically Similar Model for Predicting the Wake Field of Full-scale Ships

The scale effect leads to large discrepancies between the wake fields of model-scale and actual ships, and causes differences in cavitation performance and exciting forces tests in predicting the performance of actual ships. Therefore, when test data from ship models are directly applied to predict the performance of actual ships, test results must be subjected to empirical corrections. This study proposes a method for the reverse design of the hull model. Compared to a geometrically similar hull model, the wake field generated by the modified model is closer to that of an actual ship. A non-geometrically similar model of a Korean Research Institute of Ship and Ocean Engineering （KRISO）’s container ship （KCS） was designed. Numerical simulations were performed using this model, and its results were compared with full-scale calculation results. The deformation method of getting the wake field of full-scale ships by the non-geometrically similar model is applied to the KCS successfully.

Experimental Investigation of the Decay from A Ship’s Propeller

In the present study, an experimental investigation of the decay of the maximum velocity and its turbulent characteristics behind a ship propeller, in ＂bollard pull＂ condition （zero speed of advance）, is reported. Velocity measurements were performed in laboratory by use of a Laser Doppler Anemometry （LDA） measurement system. Earlier researchers described that the maximum axial velocity is constant at the initial stage of a ship＇s propeller jet （Fuehrer and Romisch, 1977; Blaauw and van de Kaa, 1978; Berger et al, 1981; Verhey, 1983） as reported in a pure water jet （Albertson et al., 1950; Lee et al., 2002; Dai, 2005）, but a number of researchers disagreed with the constant velocity assumption. The present study found that the maximum axial velocity decays in the zone of flow establishment and the zone of established flow with different rates. The investigation provides an insight into the decays of both the maximum velocity and the maximum turbulent fluctuation in axial, tangential and radial components and the decay of the maximum turbulent kinetic energy. Empirical equations are proposed to allow coastal engineers to estimate the jet characteristics from a ship＇s propeller.

Fuzzy Optimal Control Design for Ship Steering

This paper presents a method to design a control scheme for nonlinear systems using fuzzy optimal control.In the design process,the nonlinear system is first converted into local subsystems using sector non linearity approach of Takagi Sugeno(T S)fuzzy modeling.For each local subsystem,an optimal control is designed.Then,the parameters of local controllers are defuzzified to construct a global optimal controller.To prove the effectiveness of this control scheme,simulations are performed using the mathematical model of Esso Osaka tanker ship for set point regulation with and without disturbance and reference tracking.In addition,the simulation results are compared with that of a PID controller for further verification and validation.It has been shown that the proposed optimal controller can be used for the nonlinear ship steering with good rise time,zero steady state error and fast settling time.

Powership＇s Identity and MARPOL Convention Application

The concept, although it is not new, came to surface in the last ten years with significant technological improvement and became a temporary solution for the port cities where the supply of electricity is in need. A ship shaped floatable structure with a huge power generator on board becomes the temporary but effective solution. However, these converted ex-ships are still legally ships in order to admit them sufficiently within the scope of a leading convention, which applies to marine and air pollution from ships. This issue needs research on the legal definition of the ＂ship＂ to clarify if it is a ship and to determine whether that would also fall within the concept of MARPOL.

Calculate Thermal Infrared Intensity of the Hull’s Military Ship

Stealth technology emphasizes on the reduction in reflection and radiation energies, the surface of target's body in the range of visual, radar, thermal and near IR and so on. Providing solutions to reduce thermal IR intensity radiation is one of the appropriate actions in passive defense for identifying power and targeting enemy. Therefore, questions are brought up: How much is the thermal IR intensity radiation of surface of the hall’s vessel? How much is the effect of each parameter? This thesis tries to provide the software to answer these questions. The provided software measures thermal IR intensity radiation of the surface of the hall’s vessel by the material substance, the temperature of the surface of the hall’s vessel, the situation and characteristic of the thermal detector, noticing the coefficient of environment atmospheric transmittal. This software by changing the effective parameters on thermal IR radiation calculates the thermal radiation on thermal detector in different situations.

China's Shipping Market

Since the New China, the nation’s ports have been under the centralized control and development program of the Ministry of Traffic, with a separate shipping line. With the growth of the national economy and foreign trade after reform and opening to the outside world, it has become more evident that construction of coastal ports has lagged behind. To catch up, China is opening