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Improving the mathematical skills of undergraduate Engineering and Information Technology (EIT) students has been an enduring challenge for educators. Lecturers continually implement new strategies that try to overcome the challenges encountered in teaching university students with varying levels of success being encountered. This paper provides insight into how educators have handled the challenges students face in their mathematics learning journey. In addition, the paper highlights some of the methods used to improve the performance of these students as problem solvers, as well as the development and implementation of creative techniques that may have made the situation more successful and less challenging. The literature was searched through using a structured literature review approach based on the primary databases: Scopus; the Education Research Complete (ERC); and the Education Resources Information Centre (ERIC). This study followed the three main steps of a systematic literature review: retrieval, selection, and analysis of the literature. Analysis of the literature showed that there is still a need to further develop and deliver innovative pedagogical strategies for teaching mathematics to EIT students. It is recommended that an interdisciplinary approach, inclusive of technology, will lead to increased understanding, improve performance and, ultimately, enhance student satisfaction.

This study investigated the impact of various energy conservation measures (ECMs) on total annual electricity consumption on a single level, two-bedroom residential building in an arid climate and in a very remote area of Australia. Base case scenario of annual energy consumption profiles of the building and its existing systems were modelled and simulated using DesignBuilder software, and the results were validated by on-site measured electricity data. Two categories of ECMs (major intervention and minor intervention) were investigated and analysed. The findings show that the total annual energy consumption of the case study building can be reduced by up to 44% (2 kWh/m2·yr) when compared against the base model and measured data if selected ECMs are implemented. Significant savings from implementing selected ECMs can help alleviate the cost-of-living pressure and stress currently experienced by many households on low incomes especially for residents of very remote communities in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Livelihoods depend on access to natural, human, physical, financial, social, and cultural capital; the social relations people draw on to combine, transform, and expand their assets; and the ways people deploy and enhance their capabilities to act and make lives meaningful. The objective of this study is to analyze the impact of climate variability on rural livelihoods; to begin to understand the dynamism of the livelihood patterns concerning new challenges and threats; to analyze the value added to resource utilization at various stages from their primary harvesting through local processing and trading, to their final point of sale or consumption; and provide a distributional analysis to indicate how these values accrue to different social and economic groups living within the area. This research will lead to a new understanding of climate variability on natural resource-dependent livelihoods. It goes beyond traditional approaches to exploring the impact of climate variability by providing a more holistic picture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Piezoelectric energy harvesting systems have been drawing the attention of the research community over recent years due to their potential for recharging/replacing batteries embedded in low-power-consuming smart electronic devices and wireless sensor networks. However, conventional linear piezoelectric energy harvesters (PEH) are often not a viable solution in such advanced practices, as they suffer from a narrow operating bandwidth, having a single resonance peak present in the frequency spectrum and very low voltage generation, which limits their ability to function as a standalone energy harvester. Generally, the most common PEH is the conventional cantilever beam harvester (CBH) attached with a piezoelectric patch and a proof mass. This study investigated a novel multimode harvester design named the arc-shaped branch beam harvester (ASBBH), which combined the concepts of the curved beam and branch beam to improve the energy-harvesting capability of PEH in ultra-low-frequency applications, in particular, human motion. The key objectives of the study were to broaden the operating bandwidth and enhance the harvester's effectiveness in terms of voltage and power generation. The ASBBH was first studied using the finite element method (FEM) to understand the operating bandwidth of the harvester. Then, the ASBBH was experimentally assessed using a mechanical shaker and real-life human motion as excitation sources. It was found that ASBBH achieved six natural frequencies within the ultra-low frequency range (<10 Hz), in comparison with only one natural frequency achieved by CBH within the same frequency range. The proposed design significantly broadened the operating bandwidth, favouring ultra-low-frequency-based human motion applications. In addition, the proposed harvester achieved an average output power of 427 μW at its first resonance frequency under 0.5 g acceleration. The overall results of the study demonstrated that the ASBBH design can achieve a broader operating bandwidth and significantly higher effectiveness, in comparison with CBH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the world, freshwater is valued as the most critically important natural resource, as it is required to sustain the cycle of life. Evaporation is one of the primary environmental processes that can reduce the amount of quality water available for use in industrial, agricultural and household applications. The effect of evaporation becomes intensified especially during conditions of drought, particularly in traditionally arid and semi-arid regions, such as those seen in a number of countries over the past ten years. In order to safeguard against the influence of droughts and to save water from being lost to the evaporative process, numerous water saving mechanisms have been developed and tested over the past century. Two of the most successful and widely used mechanisms have included floating hard covers and chemical film monolayers. This article describes a laboratory based project developed for senior high school and first year university classes, which has been designed to introduce students to the concepts of evaporation, evaporation modelling and water loss mitigation. Specifically, these ideas are delivered by simulating the large scale deployment of both monolayers and floating hard covers on a small water tank under numerous user defined atmospheric and hydrodynamic conditions, including varying surface wind speeds and underwater bubble plumes set to changing flow rates. (Contains 6 figures.)

The following paper presents a computer-based learning strategy to assist in introducing and teaching water quality modelling to undergraduate civil engineering students. As part of the learning strategy, an interactive computer-based instructional (CBI) aid was specifically developed to assist students to set up, run and analyse the output from a commercially available water quality model (WQMAP) for a hypothetical raw sewage spill. The CBI aid comprised a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) module with helpful text and still graphics, and links to on-screen recorded motion movie clips showing on-screen actions and voice narrations during the instructors absence. An anonymous class questionnaire to assess the students' perceptions of the developed approach found that most students felt they were able to complete the project with minimum supervision, and have acquired a basic understanding of water quality modelling as a result of the activity. Additionally, almost all of the students found the CBI aid helpful and easy to follow.

In recent years, harvesting energy from ubiquitous ultralow-frequency vibration sources, such as biomechanical motions using piezoelectric materials to power wearable devices and wireless sensors (e.g., personalized assistive tools for monitoring human locomotion and physiological signals), has drawn considerable interest from the renewable energy research community. Conventional linear piezoelectric energy harvesters (PEHs) generally consist of a cantilever beam with a piezoelectric patch and a proof mass, and they are often inefficient in such practical applications due to their narrow operating bandwidth and low voltage generation. Multimodal harvesters with multiple resonances appear to be a viable solution, but most of the previously proposed designs are unsuitable for ultralow-frequency vibration. This study investigated a novel multimode design, which included a bent branched beam harvester (BBBH) to enhance PEHs' bandwidth output voltage and output power for ultralow-frequency applications. The study was conducted using finite element method (FEM) analysis to optimize the geometrical design of the BBBH on the basis of the targeted frequency spectrum of human motion. The selected design was then experimentally studied using a mechanical shaker and human motion as excitation sources. The performance was also compared to the previously proposed V-shaped bent beam harvester (VBH) and conventional cantilever beam harvester (CBH) designs. The results prove that the proposed BBBH could harness considerably higher output voltages and power with lower idle time. Its operating bandwidth was also remarkably widened as it achieved three close resonances in the ultralow-frequency range. It was concluded that the proposed BBBH outperformed the conventional counterparts when used to harvest energy from ultralow-frequency sources, such as human motion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]