Accessibility evaluation of chats and forums in e-learning environments

Proceedings of: 2013 International Conference on Frontiers in Education: Computer Science & Computer Engineering (FECS'13): WORLDCOMP'13, July 22-25, 2013, Las Vegas, Nevada (USA)Collaborative learning is useful for students in their learning process. Nowadays, most e-learning systems include Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) tools like chats and forums; however, are they accessible for everybody? This paper presents a heuristic evaluation of accessibility of two CSCL tools (chat and forum) in four web-based, open-source Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS): Moodle, ATutor, dotLRN and Claroline. The evaluation results show that the CSCL tools evaluated present accessibility barriers which are a handicap for many students who want to use the LCMSs Moreover, some recommendations are offered in order to improve the accessibility of the evaluated tools. Considering these recommendations in the development of the evaluated tools, all students could participate actively in the collaborative tasks proposed by teachersThis research work has been supported by the Regional Government of Madrid under the Research Network MA2VICMR (S2009/TIC-1542) and by the Spanish Ministry of Economy under the project MULTIMEDICA (TIN2010-20644-C03-01)Publicad

Dinamička distribucija sigurnosnih ključeva i koalicijski protokol IP adresa za mobilne ad hoc mreže

In mobile adhoc networks (MANETs) a tree-based dynamic address auto-configuration protocol (T-DAAP) is one of the best protocols designed for address assignment as far as the network throughput and packet delays are concerned. Moreover, MANET security is an important factor for many applications given that any node can listen to the channel and overhear the packets being transmitted. In this paper, we merge the address assignment with the security key delivery into one protocol, such that a node in the MANET is configured with IP address and security key simultaneously. To the best of our knowledge, no single protocol provides concurrent assignment of IP addresses and security keys for MANET nodes. The proposed method, which is based on T-DAAP, shows significant enhancements in the required control packets needed for assigning network nodes IP addresses and security keys, MAC layer packets, total end-to-end delay, and channel throughput over those obtained when using separate protocols. Additionally, it provides not only efficient security keys to the nodes from the first moment they join the network, but also secure delivery of the address and security key to all participating nodes. It is noteworthy to mention that providing a complete security model for MANET to detect and countermeasure network security threats and attacks is beyond the scope of our proposed protocol.Kod mobilnih ad hoc mreža (MANET) dinamički protokol za autokonfiguraciju adresa baziran na stablu (T-DAAP) je jedan od najboljih protokola dizajniranih za dodjelu adresa iz perspektive propusnosti mreže i i kašnjenja paketa. štoviše, sigurnost MANET-a je važan faktor za mnoge aplikacije s obzirom da bilo koji čvor može osluškivati kanal i slučajno čuti pakete koji se šalju. U ovom radu, dodjela adresa i dostava sigurnosnih ključeva spojeni su u jedan protokol tako da je čvor u MANET-u konfiguriran simultano s IP adresom i sigurnosnim ključem. Prema saznanjima autora, niti jedan postojeći protokol ne pruža istovremeno dodjeljivanje IP adrese i sigurnosnog ključa za MANET čvorove. Predložena metoda, koja se bazira na T-DAAP-u, pokazuje značajna poboljšanja u odnosu na metode koje koriste odvojene porotokole, kod traženih kontrolnih paketa koji su potrebni za dodjeljivanje IP adresa i sigurnosnih ključeva čvorovima mreže, MAC paketa, ukupnog end-to-end kašnjenja i propusnosti kanala. Dodatno pruža ne samo efikasne sigurnosne ključeve čvorovima od trenutka kad se priključe mreži, nego i sigurno dostavljanje adrese i sigurnosnog ključa svim čvorovima koji sudjeluju u mreži. Važno je spomenuti da je pružanje cjelokupnog sigurnosnog modela za MANET koji detektira dodatno i protumjere prijetnjama i napadima na sigurnost mreže izvan dosega predloženog protokola

Deriving information from spatial sampling floor-based personnel detection system

Field of study: Electrical & computer engineering.Dr. Harry W. Tyrer, Thesis Supervisor.Includes vita."May 2017."Research has shown and identified a clear link between human gait characteristics and different medical conditions. Therefore, a change in certain gait parameters may be predictive of future falls and adverse events in older adults such as physical functional decline and fall risks. We describe a system that is unobtrusive and continuously monitors the gait during daily activities of elderly people. The early assessment of gait decline will benefit the senior by providing an indication of the risk of falls. We developed a low cost floor-based personnel detection system; we call a smart carpet, which consists of a sensor pad placed under a carpet; the electronics reads walking activity. The smart carpet systems is used as a component of an automated health monitoring system, which helps enable independent living for elderly people and provide a practical environment that improves quality of life, reduces healthcare costs and promotes independence. In this dissertation, we extended the functionalities of the smart carpet to improve its ability to detect falls, estimate gait parameters and compared it to GAITRite system. We counted number of people walking on the carpet in order to distinguish the plurality of people from fall event. Additionally we studied the characteristics and the behavior of the sensor's scavenged signal. Results showed that our system detects falls, using computational intelligence techniques, with 96.2% accuracy and 81% sensitivity and 97.8% specificity. The system reliably estimates the gait parameters; walking speed, stride length and stride time with percentage errors of 1.43%, -4.32%, and -5.73% respectively. Our system can count the number of people on the carpet with high accuracy, and we ran tests with up to four people. We were able to use computational features of the generated waveform, by extracting the Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC), and using formal computation intelligence to distinguish different people with an average accuracy of 82%, given that the experiments were performed within the same day.Includes bibliographical references

Implementation of Internet Protocol Network Architecture for Effective bandwidth Allocation in a Multiparty, Multimedia Conferencing

Advances in multimedia technologies and development of overlay networks foster the opportunity for creating new value-added services over the current Internet. In this paper, a new service network architecture that supports multiparty multimedia conferencing applications, characteristics of which include multi-channel, high bandwidth and low delay tolerance has been proposed. The new service network architecture is built on an array of service nodes called Multiparty Processing Centers (MPCs) which constitute a service overlay network, serving as the infrastructure for multiparty conferencing, and are responsible for conferencing setup, media delivery and the provision of Quality of Service. In this paper, the main focus is on the bandwidth allocation management over the proposed service network. The analysis will determine the bandwidth demand for virtual links among the MPCs. Multimedia traffic is modeled as M/G/∞ input processes and divided into several classes, with the constraint that the aggregate effective bandwidth is within the link capacity times a prescribed utilization threshold

Skip Trie Matching for Real-Time OCR Output Error Corrrection on Smartphones

Many Visually Impaired individuals are managing their daily activities with the help of smartphones. While there are many vision-based mobile applications to identify products, there is a relative dearth of applications for extracting useful nutrition information. In this report, we study the performance of existing OCR systems available for the Android platform, and choose the best to extract the nutrition facts information from U.S grocery store packages. We then provide approaches to improve the results of text strings produced by the Tesseract OCR engine on image segments of nutrition tables automatically extracted by an Android 2.3.6 smartphone application using real-time video streams of grocery products. We also present an algorithm, called Skip Trie Matching (STM), for real-time OCR output error correction on smartphones. The algorithm’s performance is compared with Apache Lucene’s spell checker. Our evaluation indicates that the average run time of the STM algorithm is lower than Lucene’s. (68 pages

A HADOOP-ENABLED SENSOR-ORIENTED INFORMATION SYSTEM FOR KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY ABOUT TARGET-OF-INTEREST

To obtain a real-time situational awareness about the specific behavior of targets-of-interest using large-scale sensory data-set, this paper presents a generic sensor-oriented information system based on Hadoop Ecosystem, which is denoted as SOIS-Hadoop for simplicity.  Robotic heterogeneous sensor nodes bound by wireless sensor network are used to track things-of-interest. Hadoop Ecosystem enables highly scalable and fault-tolerant acquisition, fusion and storage, retrieval, and processing of sensory data. In addition, SOIS-Hadoop employs temporally and spatially dependent mathematical model to formulate the expected behavior of targets-of-interest, based on which the observed behavior of targets can be analyzed and evaluated.  Using two real-world sensor-oriented information processing and analysis problems as examples, the mechanism of SOIS-Hadoop is also presented and validated in detail

Perceived self-efficacy in League of Legends

Treball Final de Grau en Psicologia. Codi: PS1048. Curs acadèmic 2014-2015La autoeficacia es un constructo con enorme importancia dentro del campo de la psicología. Debido a esto, han sido muchos los autores que han intentado investigar sobre dicho constructos en diferentes ámbitos de la vida. Aunque se encuentran numerosos estudios sobre autoeficacia en el ámbito deportivo, e incluso en deportes específicos, no existen investigaciones en lo que respecta a los e-sports. Por ello, el objetivo de este estudio piloto es observar cómo afecta la autoeficacia percibida en un e-sport específico (League of Legends) en el desarrollo de los jugadores dentro del juego. Se analizan para ello variables tales como la clasificación, el rol de juego o la edad de los participantes. Se hizo uso de un cuestionario de autoeficacia percibida en videojuegos, el cual se administró a 134 sujetos de diferentes edades, clasificaciones y roles. Los resultados obtenidos no fueron del todo satisfactorios, salvo en las diferencias en autoeficacia percibida en función de la edad, donde se observaron diferencias significativas. No debemos olvidar que el presente estudio es únicamente un trabajo piloto, por tanto, la intención es únicamente ser un punto de inicio para futuras investigaciones no solo de autoeficacia en deportes electrónicos, también con cualquier otro tipo de variable psicológica relevante.Self-efficacy is a construct with great importance in the field of psychology. Because of this, a lot of authors have tried to investigate about this constructs in different walks of life. Although there are numerous studies about self-efficacy in sports and even in specific sports, there is no research in regards to e-sports. Therefore, the aim of this pilot study is to observe how it affects self-efficacy in a specific e-sport (League of Legends) in the development of players in the game. Variables such as classification, role playing or the age of the participants are analyzed for it. We used a scale of Self-efficacy in videogames, which was administrated to 134 subjects, this subjects was different in age, game classification and rol. The results were not satisfactory, except when we analyzed the differences in self-efficacy in term of age, we could see significant differences. We must not forget this paper is only a pilot, therefore, the intention is only to be a starting point for future research not only of self-efficacy in electronic sports, also with any other relevant psychological variable

A qualitative study on Norwegian esports students' sleep, nutritional and physical activity habits and the link to health and performance

Aim: This study explored Norwegian esports students’ lifestyle perspectives and habits concerning health and esports performance. Methods and results: Twenty participants between 17 and 21 years of age studying esports were recruited from high schools and folk high schools. The participants were interviewed through Zoom using a semi-structured interview guide, and the data were analyzed using a thematical analysis approach. The emerging themes were: 1) energy and focus, 2) the impact of gaming and esports on sleep, and 3) mental health and lifestyle factors. Proper nutrition, sleep, and reduced intake of energy drinks was considered essential factors for optimal energy and focus. Although this was the consensus, many participants reported skipping breakfast, sub-optimal sleep patterns, and habitual consumption of energy drinks. The participants also reported that sleep was negatively affected by playing right up until bedtime. However, esports matches did not impair sleep due to the time of the day matches were played. Finally, regular physical activity was considered vital for good mental health. Conclusion: The participants acknowledged that proper nutrition, enough sleep, and regular physical activity were essential for optimal health and esports performance. However, many participants reported sub-optimal lifestyle habits, such as skipping breakfast, using blue light-emitting devices before bedtime, and consuming energy drinks. Future research should consider investigating the previously mentioned lifestyle factors to help the esports population develop strategies for improving health and in-game performance.publishedVersio