Developing a mobile audiometric sound booth application for Apple IOS devices

Hearing loss in Australian children, particularly those in rural and remote areas, is a growing health concern. Resultant deafness has significant impact on the educational and social development of such children. Whilst telehealth had provided other benefits for rural and remote areas, the absence of suitable testing equipment and associated healthcare specialists has meant that there is a gap in this area of child health that could be addressed using a mobile solution. This paper discusses the research and development of a mobile application for testing and diagnosis of hearing loss in children. It is unique in its ability to be able to function in uncontrolled test environments, and conforms to current hearing assessment standards. The application also produces an audiogram that can be immediately electronically transferred to the relevant healthcare provider. The application is specifically designed for young children to use and is designed to be used in collaboration with healthcare specialist audiologists and paediatricians. The prototype is currently undergoing testing at the Telethon Speech and Hearing institute, Perth, Western Australia. The results are expected to deliver crucial quantitative data to determine the accuracy of the application, as well as qualitative data from healthcare professionals and consumers

Accelerometer based motion gestures for Mobile Devices

Many smart phones today use tiny sensors called accelerometers to provide enhanced user interface controls. Accelerometers measure the linear acceleration in the x, y, z directions based on the movement of the phone. These sensors basically reduce the need of dedicated navigation and function keys on the mobile device. Accelerometer based mobile devices use this principle for creating applications like games, controlling the orientation of the display screen, etc. The goal of this project is to extend the WebKit browser interface of Google’s mobile development platform called ‘Android’ by creating accelerometer based motion features like shake feature, orientation of images, zoom in/out, scrolling, etc. For instance, the user can shake the phone in order to erase an entered text. Also, by rotating the phone clockwise or anti-clockwise, the orientation of the underlying images will change accordingly. While browsing a web page, the user could tilt the phone in left, right, top, bottom directions which will cause the web page to scroll accordingly. Also, by tilting the phone towards or away form the user, one can zoom in and zoom out on a web page

Developing a Mobile Audiometric Sound Booth Application for Apple IOS Devices

Hearing loss in Australian children, particularly those in rural and remote areas, is a growing health concern. Resultant deafness has significant impact on the educational and social development of such children. Whilst telehealth had provided other benefits for rural and remote areas, the absence of suitable testing equipment and associated healthcare specialists has meant that there is a gap in this area of child health that could be addressed using a mobile solution. This paper discusses the research and development of a mobile application for testing and diagnosis of hearing loss in children. It is unique in its ability to be able to function in uncontrolled test environments, and conforms to current hearing assessment standards. The application also produces an audiogram that can be immediately electronically transferred to the relevant healthcare provider. The application is specifically designed for young children to use and is designed to be used in collaboration with healthcare specialist audiologists and paediatricians. The prototype is currently undergoing testing at the Telethon Speech and Hearing institute, Perth, Western Australia. The results are expected to deliver crucial quantitative data to determine the accuracy of the application, as well as qualitative data from healthcare professionals and consumers

Innovating Pedagogy 2015: Open University Innovation Report 4

This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This fourth report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. To produce it, a group of academics at the Institute of Educational Technology in The Open University collaborated with researchers from the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International. We proposed a long list of new educational terms, theories, and practices. We then pared these down to ten that have the potential to provoke major shifts in educational practice, particularly in post-school education. Lastly, we drew on published and unpublished writings to compile the ten sketches of new pedagogies that might transform education. These are summarised below in an approximate order of immediacy and timescale to widespread implementation

A Review of Platforms for the Development of Agent Systems

Agent-based computing is an active field of research with the goal of building autonomous software of hardware entities. This task is often facilitated by the use of dedicated, specialized frameworks. For almost thirty years, many such agent platforms have been developed. Meanwhile, some of them have been abandoned, others continue their development and new platforms are released. This paper presents a up-to-date review of the existing agent platforms and also a historical perspective of this domain. It aims to serve as a reference point for people interested in developing agent systems. This work details the main characteristics of the included agent platforms, together with links to specific projects where they have been used. It distinguishes between the active platforms and those no longer under development or with unclear status. It also classifies the agent platforms as general purpose ones, free or commercial, and specialized ones, which can be used for particular types of applications.Comment: 40 pages, 2 figures, 9 tables, 83 reference

The state of peer-to-peer network simulators

Networking research often relies on simulation in order to test and evaluate new ideas. An important requirement of this process is that results must be reproducible so that other researchers can replicate, validate and extend existing work. We look at the landscape of simulators for research in peer-to-peer (P2P) networks by conducting a survey of a combined total of over 280 papers from before and after 2007 (the year of the last survey in this area), and comment on the large quantity of research using bespoke, closed-source simulators. We propose a set of criteria that P2P simulators should meet, and poll the P2P research community for their agreement. We aim to drive the community towards performing their experiments on simulators that allow for others to validate their results

Problems and Solutions in Mobile Application Testing

Mobiilirakenduste testimise alaste teadusartiklite arv on viimastel aastatel visalt suurenenud. Samas testivad vähesed mobiilirakendustega tegelevad teadlased oma oletusi ja lahendusi firmades. Selle lõputöö eesmärgiks on pakkuda ülevaade teaduskirjanduses mainitud mobiilirakenduste testimisega seotud probleemidest ja potentsiaalsetest lahendustest ning kõrvutada seda alal igapäevaselt tegutsevate professionaalide arvamusega. Kõigepealt viiakse selle töö käigus läbi teaduskirjanduse uuring probleemide ja potentsiaalsete lahenduste väljaselgitamiseks, misjärel intervjueeritakse kuue mobiilirakenduste testimisega tegeleva firma esindajaid, et välja selgitada, kas kirjelduses esile toodud probleemid on olulised ka tööstuses. Intervjuude tulemusena selgus, et kuigi firmad hindavad probleemide tähtsust väga erinevalt, on siiski olemas mõned võtmeprobleemid, mida peetakse oluliseks nii teaduses kui ka tööstuses. Samas on teaduskirjanduses pakutud lahendused tihti liiga teoreetilised, üldised või vananenud, et firmade esindajatele huvi pakkuda.In recent years the amount of scientific papers published on the topic of mobile applications has significantly increased. However, few researchers test their assumptions and solutions in industry. This thesis aims to provide an overview of what current scientific literature considers problems and potential solutions in mobile application testing, and compare it to opinions of industry professionals. A literature review is performed to extract the list of problems and potential solutions, after which representatives of six Estonian companies involved in the field are interviewed to verify whether the problems and solutions proposed in the literature are relevant for industry. The study reveals that while the relevance of each problem is highly variable from one company to another, there are some key problems that are generally considered vital both by research and industry. However, the solution concepts proposed by scientific literature are often too theoretical, general or outdated to be of much interest to industry professionals