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A recent study indicated alarmingly low results in reading competencies of Portuguese engineering students. This paper intends to evaluate if this tendency is restricted to engineering studies or if it is also present in other scientific domains. To this end, two studies were conducted using a reading screening test. In the first study, 168 students from Engineering, Health, Psychology and Education participated in an unconstrained time administration of the test. In the second study, the same test was administered in a time constrained mode to 153 students from the same scientific areas. It is concluded that the low results obtained for engineering students are also detected in other scientific domains. A comparison between Engineering and other domains students show slight differences, although not reaching statistical significance. These results emphasize the importance for screening tests able to quickly and economically assess college student's reading ability. This study proposes a low cost, low time consuming tool for evaluation of reading competences, along with normative results for Portuguese speaking college population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reading is a basic competence that students have to master to be successful. Despite this fact, recent studies show that there may be a significant decline in the reading abilities of college students, one of the most educated segments of any population. This work is a prospecting study regarding the assessment of reading abilities of college students, namely in the context of Engineering education. Based on an existing screening test for assessing reading difficulties of children and teenagers, this work presents the results obtained by administrating that test to students at a top engineering institution in Portugal. An outcome of this study is the determination of a time range suitable for a massive, time limited, use of the previously mentioned test to assess college students, thus enabling a basic tool that will permit, in future works, to screen reading abilities in wider college populations. This work also shows evidence that ca. 20% of college students present a poor reading performance, revealing a strong need for monitoring college students' reading abilities along different generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fluid power systems play an essential role in modern industry, providing actuation means for a wide number of applications ranging from simple on-off movements, typically performed by pneumatic systems, up to complex servo hydraulic mechanisms used in industry. Despite this relevance, the studies of fluid power systems at an undergraduate level are often only focused on analytical analysis, creating a gap between the theory presented in the classroom and real world industrial problems. This paper presents an introductory graduate course on pneumatics and hydraulics where the more theoretical contents are complemented with unique educational laboratory experiments using 'off-the-shelf industrial components and circuits. Sample lab assignments are described that emphasize the pedagogical value of this type of activities. The five different evaluation components used to assess students are presented and discussed. Finally, statistical results of the student's opinion and grades on the course over the last 5 years are presented and commented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses thermodynamic models of air inside pneumatic actuator chambers. In servo-pneumatics common practice, these models are simplified by neglecting the temperature dynamics. Classical models in the literature assume the temperature inside the pneumatic chamber either to be constant or to follow a polytropic law. Furthermore, the mixing process of air entering the chamber and heat transfer between air and cylinder walls is often neglected or only implicitly taken into account. This work evaluates the impact of these simplifications and order reductions in the prediction of pressure inside the actuator chamber. Classical models are compared with several others not only taking into account the mixing process but also explicitly including the heat transfer between air and cylinder walls. Simulation studies show that the reduced-order models proposed in this paper can lead to a mean square error in pressure prediction of only 10 per cent of that obtained using classical models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]