Editorial: technology in higher education and human performance

Improvement of learning and human development for sustainable development has been recognized as a key strategy for individuals and organizations to strengthen their competitive advantages. It becomes crucial to help adult learners and knowledge workers to improve their self-directed and life-long learning capabilities. Meanwhile, learning in this context has expanded from individual to community and organizational levels with new focuses on externalization of tacit knowledge, creation of new knowledge, retention of knowledge assets for continuous improvement, and cross-cultural communication. To adapt to these changes, technologies have played an increasingly important role in enhancing and transforming learning at individual, community, and organizational levels. Papers in this special issue are representative of ongoing research on integration of technology with learning for innovation and sustainable development in higher education institutions and organizational and community environments.published_or_final_versio

Introduction: Redemptive Societies in Cultural and Historical Context

postprin

Introduction: redemptive societies as Confucian NRMs?

postprin

Thermal stability of current gain in InGaP/GaAsSb/GaAs double-heterojunction bipolar transistors

The thermal stability of current gain in InGaP/GaAsSb/GaAs double-heterojunction bipolar transistors (DHBTs) is investigated. The experimental results show that the current gain in the InGaP/GaAsSb/GaAs DHBTs is nearly independent of the substrate temperature at collector current densities > 10 A/cm2, indicating that the InGaP/GaAsSb/GaAs DHBTs have excellent thermal stability. This finding suggests that the InGaP/GaAsSb/GaAs DHBTs have larger emitter-base junction valence-band discontinuity than traditional GaAs-based HBTs. © 2004 American Institute of Physics.published_or_final_versio

Studies of oxide/ZnO near-interfacial defects by photoluminescence and deep level transient spectroscopy

The evolution of near-interfacial defects from Al2 O3 ZnO and MgOZnO upon thermal annealing has been studied by photoluminescence, deep level transient spectroscopy, and secondary ion mass spectroscopy. We find that all the results are strongly connected and that they point to the direction that Zn outdiffuses from ZnO to the oxide layer during annealing and creates deep level defects near the interfacial region. These defects reduce the band-edge emission and increase the deep level emission at 2.37 eV. Our study shows that the oxide/ZnO interface is relatively fragile and caution must be taken for making metal-oxide-ZnO based transistors and light emitting diodes. © 2008 American Institute of Physics.published_or_final_versio

Dynamic admittance of atomic wires

We have investigated the low-frequency admittance of quantum wires in which a section consists of several Al atoms. The atomic section is connected to two three-dimensional leads that are modeled by the jellium model. The quantum scattering problem is solved by combining the first-principles ab initio method with a transfer-matrix evaluation of the scattering matrix. The ac admittance is then computed by evaluating various partial densities of states. The nature of the ac responses are predicted for these Al atomic wires.published_or_final_versio