BACKGROUND Blended learning (BL) in a cell biology course of the premedical program at the Kasturba Medical College International Centre, Manipal, India, commenced in 2006. The program provides training in basic sciences to students, especially from the United States and Canada. The approach to the study was phenomenographic, with a qualitative study design using an open-ended questionnaire, fo...

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a technological topic with a very important societal impact. IoT application domains are various, such as smart cities, precision farming, smart factories, smart buildings, etc, and the diversity of these application domains is the source of the very high technological heterogeneity in the IoT, leading to interoperability issues. The semantic web principles and t...

An extension of TOPSIS (technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution), a multi-attribute decision making (MADM) technique, to a group decision environment is investigated. TOPSIS is a practical and useful technique for ranking and selection of a number of externally determined alternatives through distance measures. To get a broad view of the techniques used, we provide a few...

The use of virtual-reality technology in the areas of rehabilitation and therapy continues to grow, with encouraging results being reported for applications that address human physical, cognitive, and psychological functioning. This article presents a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis for the field of VR rehabilitation and therapy. The SWOT analysis is a commonly...

The future Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission will provide twodimensional maps of water elevation for rivers with width greater than 100 m globally. We describe a modeling framework and an automatic control algorithm that prescribe optimal releases from the Selingue dam in the Upper Niger River Basin, with the objective of understanding how SWOT data might be used to th...

Multiple attribute decision making is an important part of modern decision science. It has been extensively applied to various problems. There are several methods for this decision making problem. Based on TOPSIS method and Gray relational analysis method, this paper presents a combined approach to the multi­attribute group decision making. Finally, an...

In this paper we propose a fuzzy TOPSIS (Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Idea Solution) model using O(m, n)-Trapezoidal Type Fuzzy Number (O(m,n)-Tr.T.F.N.) and possibility theory. An application in the form of an example to the vendor selection problem in supply chain management is presented towards the end of the paper to highlight the salient points in the proposed possibili...