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T he building sector is the largest energy consumer in the world. Therefore, it is economically, socially, and environmentally signifi cant to reduce the energy consumption of buildings. Achieving substantial energy reduction in buildings may require rethinking the whole processes of design, construction , and operation of a building. This article focuses on the specifi c

In an urban area, the demand for taxis is not always matched up with the supply. This paper proposes mining historical data to predict demand distributions with respect to contexts of time, weather, and taxi location. The four-step process consists of data filtering, clustering, semantic annotation, and hotness calculation. The results of three clustering algorithms are compared and demonstrate...

Two digital techniques are described in this tutorial, both aimed at improving the accuracy of delta-sigma data converters. The first one corrects adaptively for mismatch errors in a MASH ADC, while the other acquires and then corrects for the nonlinearity of the intemal multibit DAC used in the ADC.

..........................................................................................................................................i Acknowledgements....................................................................................................................iii List of Tables..............................................................................................................

Continuous-time ∆Σ modulators are able to operate at higher frequencies than their discrete-time counterparts. However, they suffer more severely from non-idealities such as clock jitter and excess loop delay. The effects of these two non-idealities are explained and a continuous-time to discrete-time conversion method is presented in order to aid in the analysis of these non-idealities. Two ci...

v Preface vii Contributions xi Abbreviations xiii Acknowledgments xv

A Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is a mash-up of learning services. It enables students and teachers to assemble a work environment that is adapted to a domain and specific individual needs. In this article, we report on our experiences on using a PLE for Language Learning in five French lectures at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Continuing Education School. We found that while a PLE ha...

The hue and cry about the stark despoliation of the Niger Delta has been ongoing; and the issues at stake have centered mostly on the gross and glaring underdevelopment in the area despite the vast resources that have accrued to the Nigerian state from the region. Perhaps the most disturbing, is that oil exploration and exploitation in the Niger Delta is carried out without regard to internatio...