International Journal of Modern Education and Computer Science (IJMECS)

IJMECS Vol. 6, No. 5, May. 2014

Cover page and Table of Contents: PDF (size: 118KB)

Table Of Contents

REGULAR PAPERS

Computer Simulation Instruction: Carrying out Chemical Experiments

By Ibtesam Al-Mashaqbeh

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijmecs.2014.05.01, Pub. Date: 8 May 2014

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of computer simulation Instruction (CSI) on students' achievements: Carrying out chemical experiments to acquire chemical concepts for eleventh grade students. The subject of the study consisted two sections of a one girl's high school in Jordan. One section was randomly assigned to experimental group in which computer simulation Instruction (CSI) was used, and the other section was randomly assigned to control group in which students were instructed by using the traditional teaching instruction.
The findings indicated that there is progress on the part of the experimental group which used the computer simulation Instruction (CSI) and this was reflected positively in the students’ achievement in carrying out chemical experiments to acquire chemical concepts.

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Free Open Source Software in Electronics Engineering Education: A Survey

By Vijay Nehra Aruna Tyagi

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijmecs.2014.05.03, Pub. Date: 8 May 2014

Since the last two decades, much attention has been paid to Electronics Engineering (EE) education in India. Various commercial software tools and simulator such as mathematical application packages, electronics CAD tools, learning management systems, multimedia tools and general purpose tools supports EE education. Traditionally, proprietary software packages such as OrCAD Pspice, MATLAB, LabView, Multisim and others too are widely practiced and well integrated in electronics engineering curricula of various Universities nationwide. In today’s market, there are plenty of software tools and packages; however, most of them are expensive. The high cost of standard commercial packages is often hardship for students and faculties. Selecting various appropriate tools for academic use is considered as one of the key challenges in EE education. Over recent years, an alternative trend based on Free Open Source Software (FOSS) has gained momentum in higher education due to several benefits such as cost, license management flexibility, access to source code, security and stability etc. Presently, a plethora of open source software tools and resource related to EE can be deployed in teaching and learning process of EE education. In this communication, a short exposition of Free Open Source Software useful in electronics engineering education and research is presented. A brief outlook of FOSS packages, their web addresses and major highlights are also presented. The overall aim of this paper is to create awareness among instructors and students to impart active and self learning using FOSS.

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Modelling Online Admission System: A Multi-Agent Based Approach

By Ajay Auddy Sripati Mukhopadhyay

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijmecs.2014.05.04, Pub. Date: 8 May 2014

We have proposed an integrated Web-based online admission system using multi-agent system and Web-based technologies. Every year, most of the Universities have to organise centralised admission for under-graduate courses of its affiliated colleges. The centralised online admission system is a major reform initiative in education sector to bring about greater transparency, efficiency and accountability in complicated and time-consuming admission process. It encompasses every institution under the university to accomplish the admission process where potential student community is involved. As a result of various agents’ involvement in the whole process, coordination and communication among them are the core issue which can be efficiently handled in a multi-agent environment. Thus dynamic behaviours of the agents reveal better results. Multi-agent systems represent a new paradigm for the development of distributed software. Preliminary implementation issues for this system have been discussed with Java Agent Development Environment Technology, a java-based software platform that provides middleware-layer functionalities which facilitate the development of agent-based application, at the end of the paper.

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Traveling Transportation Problem Optimization by Adaptive Current Search Method

By Supaporn Suwannarongsri Tika Bunnag Waraporn Klinbun

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijmecs.2014.05.05, Pub. Date: 8 May 2014

The adaptive current search (ACS) is one of the novel metaheuristic optimization search techniques proposed for solving the combinatorial optimization problems. This paper aimed to present the application of the ACS to optimize the real-world traveling transportation problems (TTP) of a specific car factory. The total distance of the selected TTP is performed as the objective function to be minimized in order to decrease the vehicle’s energy. To perform its effectiveness, four real-world TTP problems are conducted. Results obtained by the ACS are compared with those obtained by genetic algorithm (GA), tabu search (TS) and current search (CS). As results, the ACS can provide very satisfactory solutions superior to other algorithms. The minimum total distance and the minimum vehicle’s energy of all TTP problems can be achieved by the ACS with the distant error of no longer than 3.05%.

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A Survey for Replica Placement Techniques in Data Grid Environment

By Alireza Souri Amir Masoud Rahmani

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijmecs.2014.05.06, Pub. Date: 8 May 2014

In data grids, data replication on variant nodes can change some problems such as response time and availability. Also, in data replication, there are some challenges to finding the best replica efficiently in relation to performance and location of physical storage systems. In this paper, various replica placement strategies are discussed. These replica placement strategies are available in the works. Replica placement contains recognizing the best possible node to duplicate data based on network latency and user request. These strategies measure and analyze different parameters such as access cost, bandwidth consumption, scalability, execution time and storage consumption. This paper also analyses the performance of various strategies with respect to the parameters mentioned above in data grid.

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A Metaheuristic Algorithm for Job Scheduling in Grid Computing

By Hedieh Sajedi Maryam Rabiee

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijmecs.2014.05.07, Pub. Date: 8 May 2014

These days the number of issues that we can not do on time is increasing. In the mean time, scientists are trying to make questions simpler and using computers. Still, more problems that are complicated need more complex calculations by using highly advanced technology. Grid computing integrates distributed resources to solve complex scientific, industrial, and commercial problems. In order to achieve this goal, an efficient scheduling system as a vital part of the grid is required. In this paper, we introduce CUckoo-Genetic Algorithm (CUGA), which inspired from cuckoo optimization algorithm (COA) with genetic algorithm (GA) for job scheduling in grids. CUGA can be applied to minimize the completion time of machines, and it could avoid trapping in a local minimum effectively. The results illustrate that the proposed algorithm, in comparison with GA, COA, and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is more efficient and provides higher performance.

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Design New PID like Fuzzy CTC Controller: Applied to Spherical Motor

By Mohammad shamsodini Farzin Piltan Saman Rahbar Ehsan Pooladi Hossein Davarpanah

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijmecs.2014.05.08, Pub. Date: 8 May 2014

The minimum rule base Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) Fuzzy Computed Torque Controller with application to spherical motor is presented in this research. The popularity of PID Fuzzy Computed Torque Controller can be attributed to their robust performance in a wide range of operating conditions and partly to their functional simplicity. PID methodology has three inputs and if any input is described with seven linguistic values, and any rule has three conditions we will need 343 rules. It is too much work to write 343 rules and have lots of problem to design embedded control system e.g., Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). In this research the PID-like fuzzy controller can be constructed as a parallel structure of a PD-like fuzzy controller and a conventional PI controller to have the minimum rule base and acceptable trajectory follow disturbance to control of spherical motor. However computed torque controller is work based on cancelling decoupling and nonlinear terms of dynamic parameters for each direction of three degree of freedom spherical motor, this controller is work based on motor dynamic model and this technique is highly sensitive to the knowledge of all parameters of nonlinear spherical motor’s dynamic equation. This research is used to reduce or eliminate the computed torque controller problem based on minimum rule base fuzzy logic theory to control of three degrees of freedom spherical motor system and testing of the quality of process control in the simulation environment of MATLAB/SIMULINK Simulator.

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