Portable Innovation Technology (China)

STEM education has become vital to equip the next-generation knowledge workers for Industry 4.0 world. STEM education refers to a curriculum based on the teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, aiming to prepare students with critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and creative thinking (4C) abilities. STEM education and its associated industry market have tremendously grown in the past decade. Developing knowledge management skills and understandings are equally critical in equipping lifelong knowledge workers. The knowledge, skills, attitudes, and abilities to identify, search, analyse, apply and disseminate information and media products are essential. However, knowledge management-related education programs, curricula or frameworks for K-12 education still need to be made available. This article examines the common characteristics of STEM and KM education, investigates the current practice of KM in STEM education in Hong Kong, and proposes a STEM curriculum with KM learning elements for K-12 education.

This paper presented a non-uniform multiphase (NUMP) time-to-digital converter (TDC) implemented in a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) with real-time automatic temperature compensation. NUMP-TDC is a novel, low-cost, high-performance TDC that has achieved an excellent performance in Altera Cyclone V FPGA. The root mean square (RMS) for the intrinsic timing resolution was 2.3 ps. However, the propagation delays in the delay chain of some FPGAs (for example, the Altera Cyclone 10 LP) vary significantly as the temperature changes. Thus, the timing performances of NUMP-TDCs implemented in those FPGAs are significantly impacted by temperature fluctuations. In this study, a simple method was developed to monitor variations in propagation delays using two registers deployed at both ends of the delay chain and compensate for changes in propagation delay using a look-up table (LUT). When the variations exceeded a certain threshold, the LUT for the delay correction was updated, and a bin-by-bin correction was launched. Using this correction approach, a resolution of 8.8 ps RMS over a wide temperature range (5 °C to 80 °C) had been achieved in a NUMP-TDC implemented in a Cyclone 10 LP FPGA.