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In this paper, we explore how engineering students are motivated to develop group creativity in a Problem and Project- Based Learning (PBL) environment. Theoretically, we take a social cultural approach to group creativity and emphasize the influences of a learning environment on student motivation in group creativity development. Empirically, a case study was carried out on a student satellite project in the Department of Electronic System at Aalborg University in Denmark, by using qualitative methods including interviews and observation. The findings show that student motivation is stimulated in multiple ways in a PBL environment, such as formal and informal group discussions, regular supervisor meetings and sharing leadership. Furthermore, factors such as common goals, support of peers and openness stimulate motivation. However, the students think that a time schedule is a barrier to group creativity. Thus, the supervisors are encouraged to be more aware of the complex relationships between student, teacher and task and the student response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the increased melting season in the arctic regions, especially in the seas surrounding Greenland, there has been an increased interest in utilising these waterways, both as an efficient transport route and an attractive leisure destination. However, with heavier traffic comes an increased risk of accidents. Due to the immense size and poor infrastructure of Greenland, it is not feasible to deploy ground based ship monitoring stations throughout the Greenland coastline. Thus the only feasible solution is to perform such surveillance from space. In this paper it is shown how it is possible to receive transmissions from the Automatic Identification System (AIS) from space and the quality of the received AIS signal is analysed. To validate the proposed theory, a field study, utilising a prototype of AAUSAT3, the third satellite from Aalborg University, was performed using a stratospheric balloon flight in the northern part of Sweden and Finland during the autumn of 2009. The analysis finds that, assuming a similar ship distribution as in the Barents Sea, it is feasible to monitor the ship traffic around Greenland from space with a satisfactory result. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper addresses a novel method for performance analysis of distributed realtime systems with complex, and especially cyclic data flow graphs. The presented method is based on Network Calculus principles, where flow and service constraint functions are used to bound data flows and processing resources. In acyclic systems flow constraints may be propagated through a system of service models along data flow paths, whereas service constraints are propagated along paths of priority order. For cyclic data flows however constraint propagation becomes equivalently cyclic leading to flow and service constraints implicitely given by a fix point equation in a space of constraint functions. In this paper a method denoted CyNC for obtaining a well defined solution to that problem is presented along with a theoretical justification of the method as well as comparative results for CyNC and alternative methods on a relevant example. The method is implemented in a prototype tool also denoted CyNC providing a graphical user interface for model specification based on the MATLAB/SimuLink framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]