We employed a quasi-experimental method to investigate the effect of creative instruction on academic performance of mould manufacturing in vocational and technological students at Taiwan. Thirty-eight participants were evenly distributed between an experimental group with creative instruction (n=19) and a control group with general instruction (n=19). This study employed a Kruskal-Wallis technique. Results demonstrate that (1) there is no striking effect of creative instruction on cognition in mould manufacturing courses; (2) for technological skills, the scores from the creative instruction were higher than those from the general instruction in mould manufacturing courses; (3) there is significant effect of creative instruction on learning attitude in mould manufacturing courses.

Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) point cloud data were gathered in the field of exposed gravel surfaces for sampling sites with a spatial extent of 6m × 6m. We propose in this letter a novel two-stage mean-based filter scheme for processing the point cloud to generate the digital surface model (DSM) at a resolution of 1 cm. To the authors' knowledge, this letter reports the first work of generating a DSM of a gravel surface of such a large spatial extent with high spatial resolution using TLS. The elevation variations attributed to gravel clasts and single grains can both be captured in the point cloud data. To eliminate data voids due to the obstruction of the line of sight, a multiple-scan strategy is employed, which includes four scans at the corners of the sampling site and two supplementary scans for the central 2m × 2m area. The resultant DSM exhibits good agreement with elevation profiles obtained using a traditional manual profiler. The proposed method is an effective tool for obtaining a quality DSM of fluvial gravel surfaces using TLS with fewer scans than previous study.

This paper presents a new generalized connector with a very simple self-routing scheme. Unlike some of the recently reported generalized connectors, this generalized connector does not rely on an explicit use of a copy network; rather it replicates packets as it routes them through its stages to their destinations. In addition to its attractive routing scheme, this generalized connector can be constructed with O(n lg/sup 2/ n) bit-level constant fanin logic gates, O(lg/sup 2/ n) bit-level depth, and can realize any multicast assignment in O(lg/sup 3/ n) bit-level time.>

This paper presents a new parallel algorithm for routing unicast (one-to-one) assignments in Benes networks. Parallel routing algorithms for such networks were reported earlier, but these algorithms were designed primarily to route permutation assignments. The routing algorithm presented in this paper removes this restriction without an increase in the order of routing cost or routing time. We realize this new routing algorithm on two different topologies. The algorithm routes a unicast assignment involving O(k) pairs of inputs and outputs in O(lg/sup 2/ k+lg n) time on a completely connected network of n processors and in O(lg/sup 4/ k+lg/sup 2/ k lg n) time on an extended shuffle-exchange network of n processors. Using O(n lg n) professors, the same algorithm can be pipelined to route /spl alpha/ unicast assignments each involving O(k) pairs of inputs and outputs, in O(lg/sup 2/ k+lg n+(/spl alpha/-1) lg k) time on a completely connected network and in O(lg/sup 4/ k+lg/sup 2/ k lg n+(/spl alpha/-1)(lg/sup 3/ k+lg k lg n)) time on the extended shuffle-exchange network. These yield an average routing time of O(lg k) in the first case, and O(lg/sup 3/ k+1g k lg n) in the second case, for all /spl alpha/spl ges/lg n. These complexities indicate that the algorithm given in this paper is as fast as Nassimi and Sahni's algorithm for unicast assignments, and with pipelining, it is faster than the same algorithm at least by a factor of O(lg n) on both topologies. Furthermore, for sparse assignments, i.e., when k=O(1), it is the first algorithm which has an average routing time of O(1g n) on a topology with O(n) links.>

This paper presents new results on routing unicast (one-to-one) assignments over Benes networks. Parallel routing algorithms with polylogarithmic routing times have been reported earlier [10,8], but these algorithms can only route permutation assignments unless unused inputs are assigned to dummy outputs. This restriction is removed in this paper by using techniques taht permit bypassing idle or unused inputs without any increase in the order of routing cost or routing time.