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The purpose of this study is to examine the reform initiatives that began with a focus towards change in the teaching and learning in Singapore classrooms with technology integration.

The methodology used in this study is review and descriptive narrative of educational technology polices, initiatives and projects.

The Ministry of Education, Singapore, has ensured that schools had infrastructure, leadership and necessary teacher training to successfully implement the initiatives.

The descriptions of the implementations are valuable lessons for other national systems in the region and beyond, seeking to integrate information and communications technology (ICT) in their education systems.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the pedagogical implications of implementing inquiry‐based learning within the context of a problem‐solving oriented curriculum in a polytechnic institution in Singapore. An interventionist study examines the impact of developing questioning skills on students’ problem‐solving abilities.

A case study approach was adopted as the key research methodology for this course. The students who participated in this study came from a class of 25 first‐year students and they were assigned to five groups consisting of five members in each group. These students ranged in ages from 17 to 19 and were an even mix in terms of gender distribution.

It was found in the study that inquiry‐based learning as an educational process of active learning encouraged students to discover new knowledge on their own and enhanced their problem‐solving abilities. By generating their own questions and evidence‐supported explanations, students were also able to engage in higher levels of cognitive reasoning in the classroom.

The findings of this study will inform curriculum designers and educators who wish to implement alternative pedagogies on how they can develop inquiry‐based lessons for their classes.

During a press conference at the Imperial Hotel in Delhi on 13 March 2001, the Internet news site, Tehelka.com, showed secret video footage of senior politicians, bureaucrats, and army officers accepting money in a fake defense deal. Two journalists from Tehelka, Anirudha Bahal and Mathew Samuel, posed as arms dealers from a fictitious arms company called West End International to sell nonexistent handheld thermal cameras to senior officials of the Ministry of Defense (MOD) in India. Bahal and Samuel paid bribes to politicians, civil servants, and army officers to procure government contracts. The journalists used three hidden cameras to videotape the corrupt politicians and officials accepting the bribes, with the most dramatic video clip showing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President, Bangaru Laxman, accepting a wad of currency notes from them. Laxman later claimed that he was not guilty of wrongdoing for accepting Rs. 100,000 (US$2,170) as a donation for the BJP. Describing the episode as “concocted,” he added that he had given the donation to the BJP's treasurer (BBC News, 2001a).

Scatter in the outcome of repeated experiments is unavoidable due to measurement errors in addition to the non-linear nature of the output responses with unknown influential input parameters. It is a standard practice to select an orthogonal array in the Taguchi approach for tracing optimum input parameters by conducting a few number of experiments and confirm them through additional experimentation (if necessary). The purpose of this paper is to present a simple methodology and its validation with existing test results in finding the expected range of the output response by suggesting modifications in the Taguchi method.

The modified Taguchi approach is proposed to find the optimum process parameters and the expected range of the output response.

This paper presents a simple methodology and its validation with existing test results in finding the expected range of the output response by suggesting modifications in the Taguchi method.

Adequacy of this methodology should be examined by considering the test data on different materials and structures.

The introduction of Chauvenet’s criterion and opposing the signal-to-noise ratio transformation on repeated experiments of each test run will provide fruitful results and less computation burden.

Many engineering applications in this era require new age materials; however, some classic alloys like spring steel are still used in critical applications such as aerospace, defense and automobile. To machine spring steel material, there exist various difficulties such as rapid tool wear rate, the rough surface formation of a workpiece and higher power consumption. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues, various approaches in addition to electrical discharge machines (EDM) are used such as dry EDM (DEDM) and near dry EDM (NDEDM).

This study focuses on these two approaches and their comparative analysis with respect to tool wear during machining of spring steel material. For this study, current, gap voltage, cycle time and dielectric medium pressure are considered input variables. This study shows that the near dry EDM approach yields better results. Hence, the thermo-electrical model for this approach is developed using ANSYS workbench, which is further validated by comparing with experimental results. This thermo-electrical model covers spark radius variation and formation of temperature profile due to electric discharge. Transient thermal analysis is used to simulate the electric discharge machining.

It is observed from this study that discharge environment parameters such as debris concentration and fluid viscosity largely influences the dielectric fluid pressure value. Experimental results revealed that NDEDM yields better results in comparison with DEDM as it shows a 25% lesser tool wear rate in NDEDM.

The range of predicted results and the experimental results are in close agreement, authenticating the model.

The paper presents reliability, maintainability and life cycle cost (LCC) analysis of a computerized numerical control (CNC) turning center which is manufactured and used in India. The purpose of this paper is to identify the critical components/subsystems from reliability and LCC perspective. The paper further aims at improving reliability and LCC by implementing reliability-improvement methods.

This paper uses a methodology for the reliability analysis based on the assessment of trends in maintenance data. The data required for reliability and LCC analysis are collected from the manufacturers and users of CNC turning center over a period of eight years. ReliaSoft’s Weibull++9 software has been used for verifying goodness of fit and estimating parameters of the distribution. The LCC of the system is estimated for five cost elements: acquisition cost, operation cost, failure cost, support cost and net salvage value.

The analysis shows that the spindle bearing, spindle belt, spindle drawbar, insert, tool holder, drive battery, hydraulic hose, lubricant hose, coolant hose and solenoid valve are the components with low reliability. With certain design changes and implementation of reliability-based maintenance policies, system reliability is improved, especially during warranty period. The reliability of the CNC turning center is improved by nearly 45 percent at the end of warranty period and system mean time between failure is increased from 15,000 to 17,000 hours. The LCC analysis reveals that the maintenance cost, operating cost and support costs dominate the LCC and contribute to the tune of 87 percent of the total LCC.

The proposed methodology provides an excellent tool that can be utilized in industries, where safety, reliability, maintainability and availability of the system play a vital role. The approach may be improved by collecting data from more number of users of the CNC turning centers.

The approach presented in this paper is generic and can be applied to analyze the repairable systems. A real case study is presented to show the applicability of the approach.

The proposed methodology provides a practical approach for the analysis of time-to-failure and time-to-repair data based on the assessment of trends in the maintenance data. The methodology helps in selecting a proper approach of the analysis such as Bayesian method, parametric methods and nonparametric methods.

Asset maintenance in manufacturing industries is a critical issue as organizations are highly sensitive towards maximizing asset uptime. In the advent of Industry 4.0, maintenance is increasingly becoming technology driven and is being termed as Maintenance 4.0. Several barriers impede the implementation of Maintenance 4.0. This article aims at - exploring the barriers to implementation of Maintenance 4.0 in manufacturing industries, categorizing them, analysing them to prioritize and suggesting the digital technologies to overcome them.

Twenty barriers to the implementation of Maintenance 4.0 were identified through literature survey and discussion with the industry experts. The identified barriers were divided into five categories based on their source of occurrence and prioritized using fuzzy-technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), sensitivity analysis was carried out to check the robustness of the solution.

“Data security issues” has been ranked as the most influencing barrier towards the implementation of Maintenance 4.0, whereas “lack of skilled engineers and data scientists” is the least influencing barrier that impacts the implementation of Maintenance 4.0 in the manufacwturing industries.

The outcomes of this research will help manufacturing industries, maintenance engineers/managers, policymakers, and industry professionals for detailed understanding of barriers and identify easy pickings while implementing Maintenance 4.0.

Manufacturing industries are witnessing a paradigm shift due to digitization and maintenance 4.0 forms the cornerstone. Little research has been carried in Maintenance 4.0 and its implementation; this article will help in bridging the gap. The prioritization of the barriers and digital course of actions to overcome those is a unique contribution of this article.

Reliability analysis is required to identify the components or subsystems with low reliability for a given designed performance. Life cycle cost analysis helps understand the cost implications over the entire life span of a product. The purpose of this paper is to present a case study describing reliability analysis and life cycle cost optimization of a band saw cutting machine manufactured and used in India.

The data required for reliability analysis is collected from the manufacturer and users of band saw cutting machine. The parameters of failure distribution have been estimated by using ReliaSoft’s Weibull++6 software. The life cycle cost is divided into various cost elements such as acquisition cost, operation cost, failure cost, support cost and net salvage value.

The results of the analysis show that the components such as band wheel bearing, guide roller bearing, limit switch, carbide pad, hydraulic cylinder oil seal, control panel dial, control panel and solenoid valve are critical from reliability and life cycle cost analysis perspective.

With certain design changes it is found that the reliability of the system is increased by 15.85 percent while the life cycle cost is reduced by 22.09 percent. The study also shows that the reliability analysis is useful for deciding maintenance intervals.

Drawing on social identity, signalling and stakeholder theories, this paper aims to examine corporate reputation’s (CR) mediating role concerning corporate social responsibility (CSR) and customer loyalty (CL) among Generation Z customers of Nepali commercial banks.

The research applied a cross-sectional survey research design to collect data from 281 customers of Nepali commercial banks. The study used a purposive sampling method to reach the respondents and partial least squares structural equation model was used to test the hypotheses.

The results reveal that CSR significantly influences CR and CL. Likewise, CR positively influences CL. Moreover, CR partially mediates the relationship between CSR and CL. It implies that CSR and CR are critical variables for CL among Generation Z customers of Nepali commercial banks.

This study focuses on understanding the importance of CSR to Nepalese commercial bank managers to create a better customer base by focusing on the CSR dimensions, i.e. economic, environmental and social. It adds to the literature on the theoretical aspect of the study of CSR, particularly in the banking industry.

It has initially investigated CSR as a higher-order construct to explain the meditational mechanism of CR concerning CSR and CL. Moreover, the study examined the issue of endogeneity.

This paper aims to propose a two-element dual fed ultra-wideband (UWB) multiple input multiple output (MIMO) antenna system with no additional decoupling structures. The antenna operates from 3.1 to 10.6 GHz. The antenna finds its usage in on-body wearable device applications.

The antenna system measures 63.80 × 29.80 × 0.7 mm. The antenna radiating element is designed by using a modified dumbbell-shaped structure. Jean cloth material is used as substrate. The isolation improvement is achieved through spacing between two elements.

The proposed antenna has a very low mutual coupling of S₂₁ < −20 dB and impedance matching of S₁₁ < −10 dB. The radiation characteristics are stable in the antenna operating region. It provides as ECC < 0.01, diversity gain >9.9 dB. The antenna offers low average specific absorption rate (SAR) of 0.169 W/kg. The simulated and measured results are found to be in reasonable match.

The MIMO antenna is proposed for on-body communication, hence, a very thin jean cloth material is used as substrate. This negates the necessity of additional material usage in antenna design and the result range indicates good diversity performance and with a low SAR of 0.169 W/kg for on-body performance. This makes it a suitable candidate for textile antenna application.