International Journal of Modern Education and Computer Science (IJMECS)

IJMECS Vol. 5, No. 2, Feb. 2013

Cover page and Table of Contents: PDF (size: 332KB)

Table Of Contents

REGULAR PAPERS

Cognitive Barriers in Trainig the Students of Higher Education Institutions, Methodology for Their Elucidation and Overcoming

By V.K. Voronov L.A. Gerashchenko

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijmecs.2013.02.01, Pub. Date: 8 Feb. 2013

The paper deals with a problem (studied by the authors for several years) of the cognitive barriers (difficulties) related to the third component of a peda-gogical triad “how to learn, what to learn, how to study”. At the first stage, methodical approaches to the control of students knowledge in mathematical and natural-science disciplines were worked our. At the next stage, the cognitive barriers of the students arising in the course of studying the above-mentioned disciplines were elucidated. The results obtained during the performance of the two specified stages allowed methodological rec-ommendations related to “The concept of modern natu-ral sciences” discipline to be developed.

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Enhancing Leakage Power in CPU Cache Using Inverted Architecture

By Bilal A. Shehada Ahmed M. Serdah Aiman Abu Samra

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijmecs.2013.02.02, Pub. Date: 8 Feb. 2013

Power consumption is an increasingly pressing problem in modern processor design. Since the on-chip caches usually consume a significant amount of power so power and energy consumption parameters have become one of the most important design constraint. It is one of the most attractive targets for power reduction. This paper presents an approach to enhance the dynamic power consumption of CPU cache using inverted cache architecture. Our assumption tries to reduce dynamic write power dissipation based on number of ones and zeros in the in-coming cache block data using bit to indicate is the block is mostly one or zero. This architecture reduces the dynamic write power by 17 %. We use Proteus Simulator to test that proposed circuit and performed the experiments on a modified version of the cacti6.0 simulator.

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Designing a Universal Data-Oriented Random Number Generator

By Rasoul Farjami Nezhad Mehdi Effatparvar Mohammad Rahimzadeh

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijmecs.2013.02.03, Pub. Date: 8 Feb. 2013

Data-oriented is new and applied theory which provides method that models the concepts with data structure. If the concept is modeled by using sufficient data in modeling, required inferences and calculations can be done fast with less complexity. Random variable was modeled with digital probability graph, by using Ahmad Fact and probability density function. Some data-oriented random generators have been presented based on data-oriented approach. In this paper a universal data-oriented random number generator is introduced which is able to generate random numbers with uniform, normal, exponential and chi-square distributions.

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An Evaluation of the Critical Factors Affecting the Efficiency of Some Sorting Techniques

By Olabiyisi S.O. Adetunji A.B. Oyeyinka F.I.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijmecs.2013.02.04, Pub. Date: 8 Feb. 2013

Sorting allows information or data to be put into a meaningful order. As efficiency is a major concern of computing, data are sorted in order to gain the efficiency in retrieving or searching tasks. The factors affecting the efficiency of shell, Heap, Bubble, Quick and Merge sorting techniques in terms of running time, memory usage and the number of exchanges were investigated. Experiment was conducted for the decision variables generated from algorithms implemented in Java programming and factor analysis by principal components of the obtained experimental data was carried out in order to estimate the contribution of each factor to the success of the sorting algorithms. Further statistical analysis was carried out to generate eigenvalue of the extracted factor and hence, a system of linear equations which was used to estimate the assessment of each factor of the sorting techniques was proposed. The study revealed that the main factor affecting these sorting techniques was time taken to sort. It contributed 97.842%, 97.693%, 89.351%, 98.336% and 90.480% for Bubble sort, Heap sort, Merge sort, Quick sort and Shell sort respectively. The number of swap came second contributing 1.587% for Bubble sort, 2.305% for Heap sort, 10.63% for Merge sort, 1.643% for Quick sort and 9.514% for Shell sort. The memory used was the least of the factors contributing negligible percentage for the five sorting techniques. It contributed 0.571% for Bubble sort, 0.002% for Heap sort, 0.011% for Merge sort, 0.021% for Quick sort and 0.006% for Shell sort.

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The Use of Educational Web Tools: An Innovative Technique in Teacher Education Courses

By Ava Clare Marie O. Robles

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijmecs.2013.02.05, Pub. Date: 8 Feb. 2013

With the increasing dependence on internet sources, educational web tools have offered teachers with various opportunities to investigate the most appropriate educational tools to suit their students’ learning preferences. Undeniably, students in this digital age need to learn how to effectively and efficiently create, collaborate and share new information on the web through the use of different tools available on the web for lifelong learning.
In response to this need, an empirical study on educational web tools as a technique to enhance student’s learning was conducted. Hence, the aim of this paper was to determine the students’ attitudes, skills and benefits they may have experienced during the conduct of their web tool activities in selected education subjects.
The results showed that students demonstrate positive attitudes on the use of educational web tools. Results further revealed that the students’ skills and the benefits they have experienced differ according to their attitudes toward the use of educational web tools in the subject. Based from the findings, conclusion has been drawn regarding the use of educational web tools to support the teaching-learning process.
Finally, this paper is supported by an actual student’s output, which can be found in the website (http://robles2011.blogspot.com/).

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An Assessment of Extreme Programming Based Requirement Engineering Process

By Muhammad Khalid Sami Ulhaq M. N. A. Khan

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijmecs.2013.02.06, Pub. Date: 8 Feb. 2013

Comprehensive requirement engineering (RE) process acts as a backbone of any successful project. RE processes are very complex because most of the requirement engineering documentation is written in natural languages, which are less formal and often distract the designers and developers of the system. To streamline different phases of the software lifecycle, first we need to model the requirement document so that we can analyze and integrate the software artifacts. Designers can ensure completeness and consistency of the system by generating models using the requirement documents. In this paper, we have made an attempt to analyze extreme programming based RE approach to understand its utility in the requirement elicitation phase. In this study, different RE process models are evaluated and a comparison of the extreme programming technique is drawn to highlight the merits of the latter technique over the conventional RE techniques.

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An Improved, Efficient and Cost Effective Software Inspection Meeting Process

By Dilawar Ali Engr Ali Javed Awais Tanveer Shahroon Saleem

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijmecs.2013.02.07, Pub. Date: 8 Feb. 2013

Normally, the inspection process is seemed to be just finding defects in software during software development process lifecycle. Software inspection is considered as a most cost effective technique, but if these defects are not properly corrected or handled it would cost you more than double later in the project. This paper focus on the last phase of inspection meeting process showing the importance of Follow-Up Stage in software inspection meeting process. This paper also suggests a set of activities that should be performed during the Rework and Follow-Up Stages so to get inspection meeting results productive and efficient. In this paper we focus on the over the shoulder reviews so to ensure the software quality having less impact on the total software cost.

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A Review of Fully Automated Techniques for Brain Tumor Detection From MR Images

By Anjum Hayat Gondal M. N. A. Khan

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijmecs.2013.02.08, Pub. Date: 8 Feb. 2013

Radiologists use medical images to diagnose diseases precisely. However, identification of brain tumor from medical images is still a critical and complicated job for a radiologist. Brain tumor identification form magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) consists of several stages. Segmentation is known to be an essential step in medical imaging classification and analysis. Performing the brain MR images segmentation manually is a difficult task as there are several challenges associated with it. Radiologist and medical experts spend plenty of time for manually segmenting brain MR images, and this is a non-repeatable task. In view of this, an automatic segmentation of brain MR images is needed to correctly segment White Matter (WM), Gray Matter (GM) and Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF) tissues of brain in a shorter span of time. The accurate segmentation is crucial as otherwise the wrong identification of disease can lead to severe consequences. Taking into account the aforesaid challenges, this research is focused towards highlighting the strengths and limitations of the earlier proposed segmentation techniques discussed in the contemporary literature. Besides summarizing the literature, the paper also provides a critical evaluation of the surveyed literature which reveals new facets of research. However, articulating a new technique is beyond the scope of this paper.

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