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This study models the process of designing learning materials for integrated STEM (iSTEM) in secondary education, as gone through by four multidisciplinary teams of STEM teachers in Flanders (Belgium). In order to identify the crucial, counterproductive, and missing activities in the observed design processes, the learning materials developed by each team were assessed with respect to the key principles of iSTEM education. Crucial activities in the observed design processes appeared to be the formation of a multidisciplinary design team, a brainstorm on themes, the identification and linking of STEM contents, and the exploration of a feasible, engaging student challenge with interrelated subproblems. The observed processes lacked a specification of the targeted learning goals and the inclusion of research-based instructional strategies aiming at these goals. The evidence-based model of the iSTEM design process resulting from this study can fuel teacher training programs and empower pre- and in-service teachers to create high-quality integrated STEM education.

In order to motivate secondary school pupils for STEM studies and professions, a teaching approach with a focus on integration of STEM components is developed. This paper focuses on the integration of physics and mathematics into an engineering design problem in K10 education, namely building and heating a model of a passive house with a sun boiler. Specific attention is given to the core ideas of integrated STEM while developing this module. These applied ideas comprise problem-centered and cooperative learning, with explicit attention to research and design, as well as taking into account results from discipline specific educational research results.

High level, abstract engineering thinking and design is a subject that is hardly addressed in current curricula for secondary education. This is contradictory to the increasing need for more in depth STEM education in secondary schools dictated by the evolution of our society towards an ever more STEM based information society. In this paper an approach is presented to introduce 16 year old Belgian pupils to some of the most important, basic concepts of control theory. Control theory is here exemplary for more general engineering science. The problem used to introduce control theory is that of heating system design in houses.

The shortage of graduates in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) has led to numerous attempts to increase students' interest in STEM. One emerging approach that has the potential to improve students' motivation for STEM is integrated STEM education. Nonetheless, the implementation of this new instructional strategy is not straightforward due to the lack of consensus about instructional practices in integrated STEM. This paper contributes to this challenge by providing a well-defined framework for instructional practices in integrated STEM in secondary education, based on the results of a systematic review of existing literature. The framework contains five key principles: integration of STEM content, problem-centered learning, inquiry-based learning, design-based learning and cooperative learning. The proposed framework has several benefits, including its applicability in the classroom and the possibility to describe integrated STEM on multiple dimensions. Nonetheless, further research is necessary to investigate the effects of integrated STEM on students' cognitive and affective learning outcomes.

A promising approach to increase students' motivation for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is integrated STEM education (iSTEM). This is an instructional approach that emphasizes the deeper connections between the STEM disciplines by involving students in design challenges centered around real-world problems. However, the successful implementation of a new instructional approach, such as iSTEM, strongly depends on teachers' attitudes toward the innovation. Therefore, a deeper understanding of teachers' attitudes toward teaching iSTEM is necessary. This study uses a survey method to investigate the influence of teachers' background characteristics and school context variables on teachers' attitudes toward teaching iSTEM. To do so, a differential approach is used. Attitudes toward five key principles for iSTEM (integration, problem-centered, inquiry-based, design-based, and cooperative learning) are examined separately to get a more in-depth and nuanced insight into the factors influencing these attitudes. Results of the multiple regression analyses show that participation in professional development is positively linked to teachers' attitudes toward all key principles, whereas several other teacher and school context variables are positively correlated with attitudes toward one or two principles. Moreover, experience in mathematics and total years of teaching show a negative correlation with several aspects of teachers' attitudes toward teaching iSTEM. Findings of this study are valuable, since they not only provide insight into possible barriers to the implementation of iSTEM but also suggest opportunities for overcoming these barriers.

We design, validate, and administer a 24-item test to study student understanding of linear functions in 1D kinematics [x(t)] and mathematics [y(x)] in the 9th grade. The items assess identification and comparison of initial position and velocity in 1D kinematics and of the y intercept and slope in mathematics using a graph or an algebraic formula. Results show that students' performance on most mathematics items is significantly better than on their isomorphic kinematic counterparts, but also that most of the easiest as well as the most difficult items are kinematics items. Students achieve the highest accuracies on graphical questions in which they must compare two positive slopes, and they achieve the lowest accuracies on questions in which they must determine or compare a negative slope. We find that students have more difficulties with the y intercept in mathematics and with the slope in kinematics. Furthermore, questions in symbolic representation result in far lower accuracies compared to questions in graphical representation, particularly when the y intercept or the slope has to be determined instead of compared. We also analyze the results qualitatively by categorizing the students'strategies and errors. We find frequent confusion between the x intercept and the y intercept in mathematics, but far less in kinematics. Negative velocities in kinematics are by far the largest pitfall, whereas negative slope in mathematics is rarely an issue. The results also show a significant frequency of interval or point confusions in kinematics but very little in mathematics. We reaffirm the occurrence of the interval or point confusion in questions with graphs and discuss three different cases of interval or point confusions in questions with algebraic expressions: numerical, algebraic, and unit based. Our results indicate a weak link between kinematics and mathematics and we suggest that closer integration between these two contexts during education could benefit student understanding of linear functions and linear phenomena in kinematics.

Integrated Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education is an emerging approach to improve students' achievement and interest in STEM disciplines. However, the implementation of integrated STEM education depends strongly on teachers' competence, which entails, among others, teachers' attitudes. Nonetheless, not much is known about the factors that influence teachers' attitudes toward teaching integrated STEM. Therefore this paper uses a survey method to get insight into the relationship between three groups of variables and teachers' attitudes toward teaching integrated STEM: teacher background characteristics, personal attitudes and school context variables. The results of the multiple regression analyses reveal three variables that are positively linked with teachers' attitudes: professional development, personal relevance of science and social context. Moreover two variables show a negative correlation: having more than 20 years of teaching experience and experience in mathematics. The results of this study provide valuable information about factors related to teachers' attitudes toward teaching integrated STEM. Moreover, these results can be deployed by school administrators to guide them when implementing integrated STEM education in their school.

This study reports on the development, validation, and administration of a 48-item multiple-choice test to assess students' representational fluency of linear functions in a physics context (1D kinematics) and a mathematics context. The test includes three external representations: graphs, tables, and formulas, which result in six possible representational transitions between them. Moreover, four linear function types are included: negative "y" intercept and positive slope, zero "y" intercept and positive slope, positive "y" intercept and negative slope, and positive "y" intercept and positive slope. The test is administered to 385 students aged 14-15 in the 9th grade from 13 schools in Flanders (Belgium) and--after validation--is analyzed by means of generalized estimating equations (GEE). The results show a significant main effect for all design factors and a significant interaction effect between representational transition and function type, as well as additional interaction effects with the gender of the respondents. Furthermore, representational transitions which include a formula prove to be significantly more difficult; in particular for the directly proportional function type, the transition to a formula stands out from the analysis. Mean accuracies in physics are significantly lower compared to mathematics. Function types with negative values for either "y" intercept or slope also result in significantly lower mean accuracies indicating the difficulty students have with negative numbers in linear functions. A distractor analysis of the incorrect answers chosen by the students reveals three distinct dominant errors: concept switching, sign switching, and switching of the directly proportional function type and the function type with positive "y" intercept and positive slope.

The display of the future is multimodal, integrating optical sensors, RFID antennas, ultrasound transducers, etc. The sensors produce a large amount of redundant data, which should be preprocessed on the substrate, ideally on the backpanel. Control gates and select and data drivers need to be more configurable and partitionable to create operational flexibility. This paper presents various circuit blocks for processing and control, including operational amplifiers, high‐resolution analog‐to‐digital converters, a microprocessor, DC‐DC converters, and high resolution sensor pixel array architectures. Moreover, the performance of the basic building blocks is compared in LTPS and IGZO technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interest in low energy, low data-rate communication is growing steadily, e.g., for use in sensor networks, body area networks, localization. The high energy efficiency required for these applications can only be reached by carefully balancing transceiver complexity, power consumption and performance. The quadrature analog correlation (QAC) receiver is an impulse radio ultra-wide-band (IR-UWB) receiver that pursues this optimal tradeoff. In this paper, the QAC receiver is studied into detail. This low complexity receiver benefits from a smartly chosen correlation template and simplified, but powerful channel compensation. Its feasibility is shown and implementation specifications are derived. Secondly, the receiver is compared against other ultra-low-power pulsed UWB receivers. The QAC receiver demonstrates an excellent energy efficiency in realistic channels both in the presence of Gaussian noise and in interference dominated environments. Index Terms--Impulse radio ultra-wide-band (IR-UWB), low power, low data-rate, quadrature analog correlation (QAC) receiver, energy efficiency.

This article presents a timing error detection and correction (EDaC) technique optimized for near-/sub-threshold operation to recover energy lost in the conventional signoff margins. The presented EDaC requires no modifications to the processor pipeline and avoids imposing additional hold constraints on monitored paths by instantaneously checking for late activity. Furthermore, two correction methods are discussed: a simple clock gating method and a low cycle overhead clock stretching method. Both provide robust last-minute error prevention. The EDaC is applied in a near-/sub-threshold implementation of the CoolFlux DSP processor and infers only a 2.8% and 2.1% area overhead for the detection and correction, respectively. Silicon measurements validate the EDaC system from 0.25 to 0.7 V (1–200 MHz) and show that it recovers all voltage margins in the near-/sub-threshold region. The design achieves a minimum energy point (MEP) of 8.1 pJ/cycle at 0.34 V and 10 MHz. Here, the EDaC technique reduces the energy consumption by 48%–17.6% with respect to the signoff margins depending on their conservatism, and it enables the processor to operate with only 12% energy overhead compared to its ideal non-margined critical operation point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses complementary FET (CFET)-based static random access memory (SRAM) to achieve next-generation bitcell area scaling and performance gain in advanced CMOS technology nodes. SRAM bitcell area reduction, lower SRAM parasitic resistance, and higher drive strength are mandatory to continue SRAM scaling with technology advancement. The CFET reduces the SRAM bitcell area by folding nMOS over pMOS and making SRAM cross-coupled connections in the middle end of line (MEOL). The compact bitcell offers large area scaling combined with lowering bitline and wordline resistance. Lower parasitic resistance improves SRAM write margin and performance. The CFET SRAM cell area, write margin, read margin, and performance are evaluated and compared with FinFET (FF)-based SRAM. The CFET 111 and 122 SRAM provides up to 43.75% and 35% area gain w.r.t. FF 111 and 122 SRAM, respectively. Moreover, the CFET 122 SRAM has 11% faster read operation than FF 122 SRAM, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Going towards high‐resolution, uniform displays with a high‐brightness range requires optimizations on different topics. This work presents an overview on this subject. To achieve a good uniformity, a compensation method is proposed using a 2T1C pixel circuit, compatible with high‐resolution requirements, improving uniformity by a factor 52.5. In order to further increase the achievable resolution, a new technology stack, using a planar and a vertical TFT is introduced. For increasing the brightness range, a global dimming method, compatible with the 2T1C pixel circuit, is demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SRAM bitcell area reduction, lower SRAM parasitic resistance, and higher drive strength are necessary to continue with technology scaling. Nanosheet (NSH) technology improves SRAM cell write-ability by having 50 mV more write trip point (WTP) than FinFET (FF) SRAM due to reduced bit line (BL) resistance (due to wider metal CD) and more drive current strength (more than 15%) than FF for the same leakage. However, due to higher bitcell area (20% larger), BL, and word line (WL) parasitic capacitance than FF, NSH SRAM would not compete with FF SRAM in terms of the read delay (26% more delay) and energy at the 3-nm technology node. PFET to NFET (PN) spacing, composed of gate cut, gate extension, and Fin pitch in an SRAM bitcell, is critical for SRAM cell height because it can take ~46% of the 111 SRAM total cell height. The forksheet (FSH), achieving extremely scaled PN space in SRAM bitcell due to device structure with limited additional processing complexity, reduces the SRAM bitcell area. As a result, BL and WL parasitics reduce and improve the SRAM read delay and stability. FSH SRAM saves 6% area benefit and achieves 24% lesser read delay than FF high density (HD) SRAM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two different external compensation methods for high‐resolution active matrix organic light‐emitting diode (AMOLED) displays are presented and compared. Both compensation methods are implemented using a small pixel circuit, namely, a 3T2C and a 2T1C pixel circuit, allowing high‐resolution displays. Due to the simple driving schemes, these methods allow fast driving, even for large displays. The characterization results show a significant improvement in current variation by implementing either of these methods. The VT compensation method using a 3T2C pixel circuit is able to reduce the current variation down to 0.56%, whereas the VT‐ and β‐factor compensation method using a 2T1C pixel circuit demonstrates a further reduction in current variations down to 0.079%. This method also clearly shows significant improvement in optical variation between neighboring pixels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiantenna systems and more particularly those operating on multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) channels are currently a must to improve wireless links spectrum efficiency and/or robustness. There exists a fundamental tradeoff between potential spectrum efficiency and robustness increase. However, multiantenna techniques also come with an overhead in silicon implementation area and power consumption due, at least, to the duplication of part of the transmitter and receiver radio front-ends. Although the area overhead may be acceptable in view of the performance improvement, low power consumption must be preserved for integration in nomadic devices. In this case, it is the tradeoff between performance (e.g., the net throughput on top of the medium access control layer) and average power consumption that really matters. It has been shown that adaptive schemes were mandatory to avoid that multiantenna techniques hamper this system tradeoff. In this paper, we derive smartMIMO: an adaptive multiantenna approach which, next to simply adapting the modulation and code rate as traditionally considered, decides packet-per-packet, depending on the MIMO channel state, to use either space-division multiplexing (increasing spectrum efficiency), space-time coding (increasing robustness), or to stick to single-antenna transmission. Contrarily to many of such adaptive schemes, the focus is set on using multiantenna transmission to improve the link energy efficiency in real operation conditions. Based on a model calibrated on an existing reconfigurable multiantenna transceiver setup, the link energy efficiency with the proposed scheme is shown to be improved by up to 30% when compared to nonadaptive schemes. The average throughput is, on the other hand, improved by up to 50% when compared to single-antenna transmission.