The lost bodies in sports, Taiwan: the history of sports for individuals with physical disabilities between 1945 and 2007

This thesis presents a history of sports for individuals with physical disabilities in Taiwan between 1945 and 2007. A Foucauldian lens is adopted. Primary data was collected from personal archives of key informants who had lived experience with the developments during this period and with whom interviews were also conducted. Materials were organised using Foucauldian genealogy and analysis was conducting using the lens of biopower to investigate how the bodies of people with physical disabilities were organised in relation to power in the rehabilitation and sporting context. The research portrays how, between 1945 and 1971, the epidemics of poliomyelitis left a large number of children in Taiwan paralysed, and most of them were segregated in institutions. These children became a social problem, and in these institutions, rehabilitation was regarded as physical education and thus became the hallmark of the special education at this time. Development in sports for the disabled occurred between 1972 to 1992, as the authorities began to pay attention to sports for these individuals and it was employed as a tool to encourage them to contribute to the greater national good. Between 1993 and 2007, the status of individuals with physical disabilities entered a liminal state in which they were neither fully included nor excluded in the sports for the disabled in Taiwan. The thesis concludes by highlighting how the Taiwanese State’s approach to individuals with physical disabilities targeted them as a social problem that needed to be managed, and sports were employed as techniques to fulfil this goal. The disabled body then becomes a pawn in the State’s power game which transformed over time, and it was made docile through the techniques of normalisation that are central to engagement with rehabilitation, physical education and sport

Theoretical principles of landscape architecture: an exploration of the core landscape theories and their applications with special relevance to the contemporary landscape profession in Taiwan

This thesis presents research concerning the nature and underlying principles of landscape architecture. The whole research study is explorative; it is not about testing a presumed hypothesis, but it is a search for a better understanding of the theoretical groundings of landscape architecture. This thesis reflects the course of this exploration and addresses the outcome drawn from the study. The research was initiated by the concern arising from the widespread misunderstanding of landscape architecture in a particular country, Taiwan. While landscape architecture is recognised as a modern environmental profession with an Anglo-American history, the concept of this western -imported profession remains obscure to many Taiwanese people. A common question asked is: What is landscape architecture? This question is more profound than it appears, as it challenges the professional identity of landscape architecture. Knowing the shared theoretical stances of the field will help to strengthen the identity and cohesion of landscape architecture. Therefore, this research asks two key questions: What are the shared theoretical principles of landscape architecture? How are these core theoretical principles taken into account in practice, especially when applied in a specific cultural/local context? Through analysing a set of landscape projects in Taiwan, the universality and applications of the core landscape theories are explored and discussed. A further in-depth case study further explores the subcategories of landscape theories that were emphasised or emerged in the Taiwanese projects to learn more about the landscape practice in Taiwan. This research aims to achieve better understanding about the field of landscape architecture and the Taiwanese landscape practice

A Study of Interaction, Visual Canvas, and Immersion in AR Design: A DSR Approach

Augmented reality (AR) as an innovative technology has changed the way people use technology for interaction and communication. While researchers have studied the application of AR, research on AR as a communication medium remains scant. In this study, we investigate the effect of AR factors (namely, interaction, visual canvas/cues, and immersion) on AR-mediated communication. We apply design science research (DSR) guidelines to design, develop, and evaluate an AR artifact. We derive the design elements based on interactivity, media naturalness, and immersion theories and develop the AR artifact as a mobile app in an iterative manner. We evaluate the design product through the informed arguments and scenarios method, and the design process by assessing its conformance to DSR principles. We show that AR factors\u27 design elements—interaction (user controls, contextual tasks, and ergonomics), visual canvas/cues (realistic 3D models, visual and audio cues, and aesthetics), and immersion (diverse components)—play a critical role in AR-mediated communication. Furthermore, high-quality product visuals and interactive user controls give users a good AR experience. From a practice perspective, AR app designers may incorporate the design process we used in our study and generate AR experiences that fully exploit AR media’s communication affordance. We contribute to knowledge by using DSR guidelines for designing and developing AR as a communication medium

Music Culture and the Self-Presentation of Indigenous Musicians on Social Media in Contemporary Taiwan

The purpose of this research was to provide an indigenous perspective of popular culture in Taiwan as a means to re-examine Taiwanese contemporary identity. In-depth qualitative interviews and digital ethnography were adopted to collect data about indigenous musicians' self-presentation on social media. Being an indigenous musician in postmodern Taiwan is a highly contested phenomenon, as social media offers a double-edged sword requiring a conjunctional analysis that delves into both the past and the contemporary. This research unpacks the performance of contemporary indigenous musicians in the post-digital media age and offers five findings. Firstly, the indigenous musicians interviewed for the purpose of this research use social media to perform their indigenous identities to wider audiences, both indigenous and nonindigenous. Secondly, identity performances of indigenous musicians on social media are inspired by and reflect the richness and diversity of Taiwanese society. Thirdly, indigenous musicians act as spatio-temporal bridges commuting between urban and rural spaces, on- and offline and between tradition and contemporaneity. Fourthly, indigenous musicians in Taiwan do not only create and perform music, but also give a huge importance to defining and re-articulating what they think indigenous music is and what role it should play in contemporary Taiwanese society. Finally, online selfpresentation provides indigenous musicians with an opportunity to present their performed identities beyond the local to a global audience, allowing non-indigenous audiences to participate in their culture. Using empirical evidence from the interviews and the digital ethnography, this thesis demonstrates how identity performances by Taiwanese indigenous musicians oscillate between three different and inter-related identity processes: ‘doing’ indigenous, ‘being indigenous’, and ‘becoming’ indigenous

Evaluating Information Retrieval and Access Tasks

This open access book summarizes the first two decades of the NII Testbeds and Community for Information access Research (NTCIR). NTCIR is a series of evaluation forums run by a global team of researchers and hosted by the National Institute of Informatics (NII), Japan. The book is unique in that it discusses not just what was done at NTCIR, but also how it was done and the impact it has achieved. For example, in some chapters the reader sees the early seeds of what eventually grew to be the search engines that provide access to content on the World Wide Web, today’s smartphones that can tailor what they show to the needs of their owners, and the smart speakers that enrich our lives at home and on the move. We also get glimpses into how new search engines can be built for mathematical formulae, or for the digital record of a lived human life. Key to the success of the NTCIR endeavor was early recognition that information access research is an empirical discipline and that evaluation therefore lay at the core of the enterprise. Evaluation is thus at the heart of each chapter in this book. They show, for example, how the recognition that some documents are more important than others has shaped thinking about evaluation design. The thirty-three contributors to this volume speak for the many hundreds of researchers from dozens of countries around the world who together shaped NTCIR as organizers and participants. This book is suitable for researchers, practitioners, and students—anyone who wants to learn about past and present evaluation efforts in information retrieval, information access, and natural language processing, as well as those who want to participate in an evaluation task or even to design and organize one

Multimedia Development of English Vocabulary Learning in Primary School

In this paper, we describe a prototype of web-based intelligent handwriting education system for autonomous learning of Bengali characters. Bengali language is used by more than 211 million people of India and Bangladesh. Due to the socio-economical limitation, all of the population does not have the chance to go to school. This research project was aimed to develop an intelligent Bengali handwriting education system. As an intelligent tutor, the system can automatically check the handwriting errors, such as stroke production errors, stroke sequence errors, stroke relationship errors and immediately provide a feedback to the students to correct themselves. Our proposed system can be accessed from smartphone or iPhone that allows students to do practice their Bengali handwriting at anytime and anywhere. Bengali is a multi-stroke input characters with extremely long cursive shaped where it has stroke order variability and stroke direction variability. Due to this structural limitation, recognition speed is a crucial issue to apply traditional online handwriting recognition algorithm for Bengali language learning. In this work, we have adopted hierarchical recognition approach to improve the recognition speed that makes our system adaptable for web-based language learning. We applied writing speed free recognition methodology together with hierarchical recognition algorithm. It ensured the learning of all aged population, especially for children and older national. The experimental results showed that our proposed hierarchical recognition algorithm can provide higher accuracy than traditional multi-stroke recognition algorithm with more writing variability

Developing Learning System in Pesantren The Role of ICT

According to Krashen's affective filter hypothesis, students who are highly motivated have a strong sense of self, enter a learning context with a low level of anxiety, and are much more likely to become successful language acquirers than those who do not. Affective factors, such as motivation, attitude, and anxiety, have a direct impact on foreign language acquisition. Horwitz et al. (1986) mentioned that many language learners feel anxious when learning foreign languages. Thus, this study recruits 100 college students to fill out the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) to investigate language learning anxiety. Then, this study designs and develops an affective tutoring system (ATS) to conduct an empirical study. The study aims to improve students’ learning interest by recognizing their emotional states during their learning processes and provide adequate feedback. It is expected to enhance learners' motivation and interest via affective instructional design and then improve their learning performance

Selected Papers from IEEE ICASI 2019

The 5th IEEE International Conference on Applied System Innovation 2019 (IEEE ICASI 2019, https://2019.icasi-conf.net/), which was held in Fukuoka, Japan, on 11–15 April, 2019, provided a unified communication platform for a wide range of topics. This Special Issue entitled “Selected Papers from IEEE ICASI 2019” collected nine excellent papers presented on the applied sciences topic during the conference. Mechanical engineering and design innovations are academic and practical engineering fields that involve systematic technological materialization through scientific principles and engineering designs. Technological innovation by mechanical engineering includes information technology (IT)-based intelligent mechanical systems, mechanics and design innovations, and applied materials in nanoscience and nanotechnology. These new technologies that implant intelligence in machine systems represent an interdisciplinary area that combines conventional mechanical technology and new IT. The main goal of this Special Issue is to provide new scientific knowledge relevant to IT-based intelligent mechanical systems, mechanics and design innovations, and applied materials in nanoscience and nanotechnology

Game-inspired Pedagogical Conversational Agents: A Systematic Literature Review

Pedagogical conversational agents (PCAs) are an innovative way to help learners improve their academic performance via intelligent dialog systems. However, PCAs have not yet reached their full potential. They often fail because users perceive conversations with them as not engaging. Enriching them with game-based approaches could contribute to mitigating this issue. One could enrich a PCA with game-based approaches by gamifying it to foster positive effects, such as fun and motivation, or by integrating it into a game-based learning (GBL) environment to promote effects such as social presence and enable individual learning support. We summarize PCAs that are combined with game-based approaches under the novel term “game-inspired PCAs”. We conducted a systematic literature review on this topic, as previous literature reviews on PCAs either have not combined the topics of PCAs and GBL or have done so to a limited extent only. We analyzed the literature regarding the existing design knowledge base, the game elements used, the thematic areas and target groups, the PCA roles and types, the extent of artificial intelligence (AI) usage, and opportunities for adaptation. We reduced the initial 3,034 records to 50 fully coded papers, from which we derived a morphological box and revealed current research streams and future research recommendations. Overall, our results show that the topic offers promising application potential but that scholars and practitioners have not yet considered it holistically. For instance, we found that researchers have rarely provided prescriptive design knowledge, have not sufficiently combined game elements, and have seldom used AI algorithms as well as intelligent possibilities of user adaptation in PCA development. Furthermore, researchers have scarcely considered certain target groups, thematic areas, and PCA roles. Consequently, our paper contributes to research and practice by addressing research gaps and structuring the existing knowledge base