Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Educational Games for Self Learning in Introductory Programming Courses - a Straightforward Design Approach with Progression Mechanisms

During the relatively short history of Computer science and programming education the pass rate has been low in most introductory programming courses at university level. Students taking courses have had severe problems in the understanding of how to construct algorithms and also with the implementation of more basic programming techniques. There are identified bottlenecks in theoretical concepts but there have also been problems with the solving of assignments and more practical parts of programming courses. Educational games aimed at teaching programming has been frequently discussed in academic research during the last years. Many of them feature studies of developed games and some point to good results in learning. The developed games range from puzzle games to Massive Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games (MMORPG) and with all from per purpose built games to embedding learning content in existing games. Although per purpose built games have proven to be most efficient an objection has been that they are too expensive. What features are really needed to engage students in a programming game? Do we need to make games that resemble the gaming industry’s AAA games to a cost of 20 to 30 million euros per title in order to motivate students? This study evaluates an approach using different progression mechanisms to attempt to motivate the players along with a straight forward narrative that situates the learning of various programming concepts for the player. Players get various programming missions on different levels to solve in different Swedish cities. After a completed mission players get points related to the quality of their code solutions in the Python programming language. If they have enough points they get access to a higher level where more advanced programming techniques are required. A game prototype has been developed in the Flash environment using the ActionScript programming language. A quantative approached with semi-structured interviews has been used in the evaluation of the prototype. Findings show that the game could help students to improve their programming skills and our recommendation is that educational games should be used for self learning in introductory programming courses if they can be designed in a way that attracts the students.
Parametric-design modes of the ANDECS control-dynamics design machine

A design-logic frame is developed for a two-stage process of parametric-design, where the first stage is the definition of the design space by either an analytic or a model-defined parametrization. The second stage is either a direct search via trial& error human feedback interaction between the indicator space and the design space, or a demand-driven experimental search via explicit decision making in the demand space and vector-optimiz. based automatic search iterations in the design space. This is illustrated by an example of a hyperstability control design for a flexible structure antenna mast.
Art Based Research: Screen-Printing as the Artist-Teacher

This Art Based research is indicative of the Artist-Teacher Connection. The art teacher cannot teach without first practicing art. To become a more informed art teacher, one must become a more informed artist. This study is based on the methodology and discovery an Artist-Teacher must take while learning Screen-Printing. A goal of the research is to examine the process, history and content of screen-printing and to apply that new knowledge to teaching. Methodology of the study included heuristic inquiry in the form of interviews, grounded theory as the researcher making art, data and content analysis, which entails the study of screen-printing lessons, procedures and history in electronic and data texts. The data collection methods are videography, photography, social networking and blogging. These methods are intuitive to the researcher and reflect visual culture as it relates to research methods and education. The teaching strategies the researcher learns are those are problem solving and creative thinking. SCREEN-PRINTING AS THE ARTIST-TEACHER iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank the Dr. Simpson as well as the other professors and staff at the Boston University Masters of Art Education program. Without this online program, I would not have the opportunity to receive a degree of this nature in the field of art education. Additionally, I want to thank my friends and family, in particular my parents who helped me with editing my papers for grammatical and spelling issues. Thank you to my fellow BU classmates as I enjoyed your friendship and support online and at Summer Studios. I owe my greatest gratitude to my husband, Clinton for supporting me through the entire program. Clinton, you sacrificed the world for me and helped me in every aspect possible. You have been an emotional and physical support as well as the voice of reason when I had none. Thank You. SCREEN-PRINTING AS THE ARTIST-TEACHER iv
A framework for realistic modeling and display of object surface appearance

With advances in screen and video hardware technology, the type of content presented on computers has progressed from text and simple shapes to high-resolution photographs, photorealistic renderings, and high-definition video. At the same time, there have been significant advances in the area of content capture, with the development of devices and methods for creating rich digital representations of real-world objects. Unlike photo or video capture, which provide a fixed record of the light in a scene, these new technologies provide information on the underlying properties of the objects, allowing their appearance to be simulated for novel lighting and viewing conditions. These capabilities provide an opportunity to continue the computer display progression, from high-fidelity image presentations to digital surrogates that recreate the experience of directly viewing objects in the real world. In this dissertation, a framework was developed for representing objects with complex color, gloss, and texture properties and displaying them onscreen to appear as if they are part of the real-world environment. At its core, there is a conceptual shift from a traditional image-based display workflow to an object-based one. Instead of presenting the stored patterns of light from a scene, the objective is to reproduce the appearance attributes of a stored object by simulating its dynamic patterns of light for the real viewing and lighting geometry. This is accomplished using a computational approach where the physical light sources are modeled and the observer and display screen are actively tracked. Surface colors are calculated for the real spectral composition of the illumination with a custom multispectral rendering pipeline. In a set of experiments, the accuracy of color and gloss reproduction was evaluated by measuring the screen directly with a spectroradiometer. Gloss reproduction was assessed by comparing gonio measurements of the screen output to measurements of the real samples in the same measurement configuration. A chromatic adaptation experiment was performed to evaluate color appearance in the framework and explore the factors that contribute to differences when viewing self-luminous displays as opposed to reflective objects. A set of sample applications was developed to demonstrate the potential utility of the object display technology for digital proofing, psychophysical testing, and artwork display.
When the Story Won't Write Itself

This article describes some of the "necessary complexities" in writing teaching stories and suggests a strategy for writers when they struggle to give shape and structure to experience. Using embodied images of the self—before and after the experience— the storyteller can better hone details of the situation so that they inform andsupport the thematic meanings of the story.Copyright of Reflections: Narratives of Professional Helping is the property of Cleveland State University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
Test of Visual Perceptual Skills--Revised: An Overview and Critique

Paediatric occupational therapists frequently assess and treat children and youth presenting with visual perceptual problems. Difficulties in this skill area can have a negative impact on a number of occupational performance and functional skill areas for children and youth including their ability to successfully complete activities of daily living, participate in play/recreational activities, complete school-related work and accomplish age-related developmental tasks. Therefore, it is important for occupational therapists to utilize visual perceptual assessments that possess sound measurement properties (such as validity, reliability, responsiveness and clinical utility). The Test of Visual Perceptual Skills--Revised is an instrument frequently used by paediatric occupational therapists to evaluate children and youth presenting with visual perceptual dysfunction. Occupational therapists need to be cognizant of the measurement properties of the assessments they use in order to provide the best quality care for the paediatric clients they serve. Therefore, a review and critique of the Test of Visual Perceptual Skills--Revised is presented.
Evaluation of 3D Reconstructing Based on Visual Hull Algorithms

3D reconstruction of real world objects is becoming more and more popular among computer graphics and computer vision researchers. One of the more practical approaches of achieving this is called Multi View Geometry, a approach that are using images taken of the real world objects to recreate it. But it is not always easy to know how to get the desired result out of this approach because there are many variables that affects the reconstructions accuracy, for example the number of images used and the resolution of these images. In this paper a silhouette based 3D reconstruction algorithm is evaluated. Three programs are created each with its own purpose. The first program is used to create as perfect silhouette images as possible in order to get as accurate input data as possible. The second program uses these silhouettes and produces a volumetric reconstruction of the object being reconstructed. The third program creates a polygonal mesh from the volumetric data. The polygonal and volumetric reconstructions are then used when evaluating the visual and volumetric accuracy of the reconstructions. The implemented algorithm is capable of running at real-time or near real-time and produces reconstructions with a high accuracy. It is shown how different silhouette resolutions and the resolution of the volumetric reconstructions influence the accuracy of the created reconstructions. It is also shown that the biggest gain in accuracy related to the number of silhouette images used is gained when increasing from one silhouette and up to ten silhouettes and that by increasing the number of silhouettes more only a low improvement in accuracy is gained.
A Method for Evaluating Performance of it-Centric Businesses Applied to the Domain of Electronic Marketplaces

We present a flexible, context-specific, theory-based method for evaluating organizational performance that builds on the competing values framework. Our method consists of two phases, a conceptual and empirical phase, and is operationalized as a set of six steps, three of which address the development of appropriate criteria, while the remaining three address the measurement of performance. We provide a proof-of-concept for the method by applying it to electronic marketplaces (EMPs). Our EMP performance analysis demonstrates that EMPs with higher performance values survived, while those with lower performance values failed. Specifically, our method for evaluating organizational performance explains the survival or demise of 90 percent of the EMPs we examined.
Improving Human-Machine Interaction

II Acknowledgements . IV Publications related to this thesis . VI Table of contents . VII List of tables. X List of figures . XI Chapter 1: Introduction . 1 1.1 Human-machine interaction . 1 1.2 Motivation and research questions . 1 1.3 Objectives . 4 1.4 Organization of the thesis . 5 Chapter 2: Background and Literature Review . 7 2.
A LOCATION-AWARE SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING SYSTEM

Social media users generate a large volume of data, which can contain meaningful and useful information. One such example is information about locations, which may be useful in applications such as marketing and security monitoring. There are two types of locations: location entities mentioned in the text of the messages and the physical locations of users. Extracting the first type of locations is not trivial because the location entities in the text are often ambiguous. In this thesis, we implement a sequential classification model with conditional random fields followed by a rule-based disambiguation model, we apply them to Twitter messages (tweets) and we show that they handle the ambiguous location entities in our dataset reasonably well. Only very few users disclose their physical locations; in order to automatically detect their locations, many approaches have been proposed using various types of information, including the tweets posted by the users. It is not easy to infer the original locations from text data, because text tends to be noisy, particularly in social media. Recently, deep learning techniques have been shown to reduce the error rate of many machine learning tasks, due to their ability to learn meaningful representations of input data. We investigate the potential of building a deep-learning architecture to infer the location of Twitter users based merely on their tweets. We find that
PROSES INTEGRASI SIKAP SOSIAL DAN SPIRITUAL DALAM PEMBELAJARAN MATEMATIKA PADA SISWA KELAS VII SMP NEGERI DI KECAMATAN PURWODADI

Abstract : The purposes of this study were to describe: (1) how the teachers prepared learning activities to integrate social and spiritual attitude, (2) the integration of social and spiritual attitude in teaching and learning, (3) how teachers assessed the social and spiritual attitudes. Qualitative research was applied in this research.The subjects of the research were seventh grade mathematics teachers in Purwodadi Subdistrict and the subjects selection criteria were based on teachers who had followed the training curriculum in 2013 and recommended by the headmaster of the schools. The subjects are selected based on specific criteria by using snowball sampling technique. Source of data derived from informants (teachers and students), documentation and learning process. The data collection technique was done by observation, interviews and documentation. Data analysis used Miles and Huberman’s concept that are data collection, data reduction, presenting the data, and drawing the conclusion. The validity of the data used source triangulation. The results of the study could be concluded as follows. (1) Preparation of learning activities to integrade spiritual attitude made by reviewing KI 1, choose the appropriate KD, making the indicator, developing the material, made the instrument to measure the spiritual attitude. While the preparation of learning activities that integrate social attitudes conducted by reviewing KI 2, choose the appropriate KD, making the indicator, developing the material, made the instrument to measure social attitudes. (2) Integration process of spiritual attitudes was conducted by the teachers in preliminary activities and in the core activities by providing motivation or encouragement, direction, and warning to students through a set of examples of God's creation that is in their everyday lives. Spiritual attitudes developed by teachers were grateful and fear of God Almighty. Integration process of social attitudes conducted by teachers in preliminary activities, core activities and close activities with the teacher giving cover modelling, assignment, and referrals through examples of phenomena that exist in everyday life associated with the material set. Social attitudes developed by teachers were discipline, mutual help, caring, responsibility and tolerance. (3) The teachers made assessment of spiritual attitude in three ways: observation, journals and self-assessment. The teachers made assessment of social attitudes in three ways: observation, journals and peer assessment. Keywords : attitudes integration process, social attitudes, spiritual attitude, attitude assessment process.
OPEN LOOKファンクショナルスペック : graphical user interface functional specification

第１部 入門（設計方針；概要） 第２部 エレメントの使用（ワークスペース、アイコンおよびウィンドウ；コントロール；コントロールエリア；メニューエレメント；スクロール；スクローリングリスト；カラーと３次元デザイン） 第３部 ＯＰＥＮ ＬＯＯＫ ＧＵＩの必須機能（ＯＰＥＮ ＬＯＯＫ ＧＵＩの必須メニュー；ワークスペース属性；ファイルマネージャ；プロセスマネージャ；キーボードとマウスの仕様） 第４部 ＯＰＥＮ ＬＯＯＫ ＧＵＩの使用方法（メニューの使用方法；ウィンドウ、アイコン、ペイン上での選択および操作；テキストおよびグラフィックの選択と操作；プロパティウィンドウの使用方法） 付録（承認；デザインエレメントの詳細；ＯＰＥＮ ＬＯＯＫ ＧＵＩのヘルプテキスト；ＯＰＥＮ ＬＯＯＫ ＧＵＩの国際化に関する考慮事項）
Multiscale Sparse Image Representation with Learned Dictionaries (PREPRINT)

Abstract : This paper introduces a new framework for learning multiscale sparse representations of natural images with overcomplete dictionaries. Our work extends the K-SVD algorithm [1], which learns sparse single-scale dictionaries for natural images. Recent work has shown that the K-SVD can lead to state-of-the-art image restoration results [2, 3]. We show that these are further improved with a multiscale approach, based on a Quadtree decomposition. Our framework provides an alternative to multiscale pre-defined dictionaries such as wavelets, curvelets, and contourlets, with dictionaries optimized for the data and application instead of pre-modelled ones.
An Introduction to the History of Algebra: Solving Equations from Mesopotamian Times to the Renaissance

'This text should not be viewed as a comprehensive history of algebra before 1600, but as a basic introduction to the types of problems that illustrate the earliest forms of algebra. It would be particularly useful for an instructor who is looking for examples to help enliven a course on elementary algebra with problems drawn from actual historical texts' - Warren Van Egmond about the French edition for ""MathSciNet"". This book does not aim to give an exhaustive survey of the history of algebra up to early modern times but merely to present some significant steps in solving equations and, wherever applicable, to link these developments to the extension of the number system. Various examples of problems, with their typical solution methods, are analyzed, and sometimes translated completely. Indeed, it is another aim of this book to ease the reader's access to modern editions of old mathematical texts, or even to the original texts; to this end, some of the problems discussed in the text have been reproduced in the appendices in their original language (Greek, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, French, German, Provencal, and Italian) with explicative notes.
Content-Based Image Retrieval System for Interstitial Lung Diseases

Finding similar images or reference is one way to assist radiologist for differential diagnosis of Interstitial Lung Diseases (ILDs). Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) has been identified as an important research topic in this direction. CBIR system could exploit the wealth of HRCT data stored in the Picture Archival and Communication System (PACS) by finding similar images or references that will help to narrow down the differential diagnosis of ILDs. These benefits motivated us to design a special purpose CBIR system (Med-IR) for Interstitial Lung Diseases (ILDs), where the user can provide one interstitial disease pattern as input and the system will retrieve few most similar patterns available in the database. Med-IR uses visual content such as texture to retrieve image from large image database, given a query image. A novel approach for rotation invariant texture retrieval is proposed. A software platform is designed to store the images and retrieve similar images against a query image on demand. A graphical user interface (GUI) has been developed to facilitate query formation, retrieval and display the retrieved images. The performance of the system is evaluated using a database that contains 60 HRCT images (in DICOM format) containing five lung tissue pattern such as consolidation, nodular, emphysema, ground glass and normal. Quantitative performance evaluation shows that the system achieves a precision of 67.62% and recall of 78.89%. Feedback from radiologists at different level of expertise on system performance will help for further improvement. Therefore, a module has been developed to collect the feedback on system performance from radiologists and integrated with the GUI. Our objective is to demonstrate the software tool and get the feedback from radiologists so as to improve the performance further.
Literary Translation: A Practical Guide

In this book, both beginning and experienced translators will find pragmatic techniques for dealing with problems of literary translation, whatever the original language. Certain challenges and certain themes recur in translation, whatever the language pair. This guide proposes to help the translator navigate through them. The book's hands-on approach should make it accessible to translators of any background. A significant portion of this "Practical Guide" is devoted to the question of how to go about finding an outlet for one's translations.
Abstracting Influences for Efficient Multiagent Coordination Under Uncertainty

When planning optimal decisions for teams of agents acting in uncertain domains, conventional methods explicitly coordinate all joint policy decisions and, in doing so, are inherently susceptible to the curse of dimensionality, as state, action, and observation spaces grow exponentially with the number of agents. With the goal of extending the scalability of optimal team coordination, the research presented in this dissertation examines how agents can reduce the amount of information they need to coordinate. Intuitively, to the extent that agents are weakly coupled, they can avoid the complexity of coordinating all decisions; they need instead only coordinate abstractions of their policies that convey their essential influences on each other. In formalizing this intuition, I consider several complementary aspects of weakly-coupled problem structure, including agent scope size, corresponding to the number of an agent's peers whose decisions influence the agent's decisions, and degree of influence, corresponding to the proportion of unique influences that peers can feasibly exert. To exploit this structure, I introduce a (transition-dependent decentralized POMDP) model that efficiently decomposes into local decision models with shared state features. This context yields a novel characterization of influences as transition probabilities (compactly encoded using a dynamic Bayesian network). Not only is this influence representation provably sufficient for optimal coordination, but it also allows me to frame the subproblems of (1) proposing influences, (2) evaluating influences, and (3) computing optimal policies around influences as mixed-integer linear programs. The primary advantage of working in the influence space is that there are potentially significantly fewer feasible influences than there are policies. Blending prior work on decoupled joint policy search and constraint optimization, I develop influence-space search algorithms that, for problems with a low degree of influence, compute optimal solutions orders of magnitude faster than policy-space search. When agents' influences are constrained, influence-space search also outperforms other state-of-the-art optimal solution algorithms. Moreover, by exploiting both degree of influence and agent scope size, I demonstrate scalability, substantially beyond the reach of prior optimal methods, to teams of 50 weakly-coupled transition-dependent agents.