An Explorative Study of How Children Perceive Their Play Experience of Digital Games

Digital gaming has become a staple in the play repertoire of most children. Consequently, so has research into its potential impact on childhood development. Within this field of research, one branch has specialized in the exploration of the possible educational potential of digital gaming. This study aims at an investigation of the experiences and meaning-making of children of a middle age with playing in general and digital game playing from a sociocultural and humanistic-existential perspective. Through this perspective, the study attempts an exploration of how children can learn from digital games beyond mere instrumental learning, engaging instead in deeper and less formal learning processes which allow them to mature, to gain new insights and to form new identities. The study takes a mixed method approach. Thirty-two children (mean age 10.5) were asked to fill out questionnaires on their digital gaming habits, and eight children (mean age 10.1) were interviewed in friendship pairs on their play and digital game play experiences. Reflective thematic analysis was used to analyse the interviews. Findings suggest that children experience digital gaming as a digital extension of offline play with many common play characteristics. However, they also point out intricate differences. Children perceive their opportunities for growth and agency in digital games as limited, while restructured social rules result in some children experiencing greater self-efficacy and self-concepts. This study is arguably the first to explore children’s emotions and feelings about offline play in relation to digital game play. Based on the findings, suggestions for the use of digital gaming in a therapeutic context are offered. A comprehensive literature review and a critique of this study are included and further implications are considered

Disconnected Skeleton: Shape at its Absolute Scale

We present a new skeletal representation along with a matching framework to address the deformable shape recognition problem. The disconnectedness arises as a result of excessive regularization that we use to describe a shape at an attainably coarse scale. Our motivation is to rely on the stable properties of the shape instead of inaccurately measured secondary details. The new representation does not suffer from the common instability problems of traditional connected skeletons, and the matching process gives quite successful results on a diverse database of 2D shapes. An important difference of our approach from the conventional use of the skeleton is that we replace the local coordinate frame with a global Euclidean frame supported by additional mechanisms to handle articulations and local boundary deformations. As a result, we can produce descriptions that are sensitive to any combination of changes in scale, position, orientation and articulation, as well as invariant ones.Comment: The work excluding {\S}V and {\S}VI has first appeared in 2005 ICCV: Aslan, C., Tari, S.: An Axis-Based Representation for Recognition. In ICCV(2005) 1339- 1346.; Aslan, C., : Disconnected Skeletons for Shape Recognition. Masters thesis, Department of Computer Engineering, Middle East Technical University, May 200

Implementing a 3D histogram version of the energy-test in ROOT

Comparing simulation and data histograms is of interest in nuclear and particle physics experiments; however, the leading three-dimensional histogram comparison tool available in ROOT, the 3D Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, exhibits shortcomings. Throughout the following, we present and discuss the implementation of an alternative comparison test for three-dimensional histograms, based on the Energy-Test by Aslan and Zech. The software package can be found at http://www-nuclear.tau.ac.il/ecohen/.This work was supported by the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation, as well as the Science and Technology Facilities Council, UK

Flea beetles (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae: Alticinae) collected by malaise trap method in Gölcük Natural Park (Isparta, Turkey), with a new record for Turkish fauna

This study is based on Alticinae (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) material collected by Malaise trapping which is different from other standardized collecting methods. A total of 19 flea beetle species belonging to 6 genera were collected from Gölcük Natural Park, Isparta (Turkey) during 2009. The species are listed in a table together with distributional data in Turkey. Among them, Longitarsus curtus (Allard, 1860) is recorded for the first time in Turkey. L. monticola Kutschera, 1863 and L. curtus are recently separated synonyms and thus all data referring to the distribution of both species are currently important. Hence, the zoogeographical distribution of the new record is reviewed with some remarks; habitus and genitalia are illustrated

A quantum heat engine with coupled superconducting resonators

We propose a quantum heat engine composed of two superconducting transmission line resonators interacting with each other via an optomechanical-like coupling. One resonator is periodically excited by a thermal pump. The incoherently driven resonator induces coherent oscillations in the other one due to the coupling. A limit cycle, indicating finite power output, emerges in the thermodynamical phase space. The system implements an all-electrical analog of a photonic piston. Instead of mechanical motion, the power output is obtained as a coherent electrical charging in our case. We explore the differences between the quantum and classical descriptions of our system by solving the quantum master equation and classical Langevin equations. Specifically, we calculate the mean number of excitations, second-order coherence, as well as the entropy, temperature, power and mean energy to reveal the signatures of quantum behavior in the statistical and thermodynamic properties of the system. We find evidence of a quantum enhancement in the power output of the engine at low temperatures.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figures, new references adde

A framework for use of wireless sensor networks in forest fire detection and monitoring

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Forest fires are one of the main causes of environmental degradation nowadays. Current surveillance systems for forest fires lack in supporting real-time monitoring of every point of a region at all times and early detection of fire threats. Solutions using wireless sensor networks, on the other hand, can gather sensory data values, such as temperature and humidity, from all points of a field continuously, day and night, and, provide fresh and accurate data to the fire-fighting center quickly. However, sensor networks face serious obstacles like limited energy resources and high vulnerability to harsh environmental conditions, that have to be considered carefully. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive framework for the use of wireless sensor networks for forest fire detection and monitoring. Our framework includes proposals for the wireless sensor network architecture, sensor deployment scheme, and clustering and communication protocols. The aim of the framework is to detect a fire threat as early as possible and yet consider the energy consumption of the sensor nodes and the environmental conditions that may affect the required activity level of the network. We implemented a simulator to validate and evaluate our proposed framework. Through extensive simulation experiments, we show that our framework can provide fast reaction to forest fires while also consuming energy efficiently. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Non-parametric comparison of histogrammed two-dimensional data distributions using the Energy Test

When monitoring complex experiments, comparison is often made between regularly acquired histograms of data and reference histograms which represent the ideal state of the equipment. With the larger HEP experiments now ramping up, there is a need for automation of this task since the volume of comparisons could overwhelm human operators. However, the two-dimensional histogram comparison tools available in ROOT have been noted in the past to exhibit shortcomings. We discuss a newer comparison test for two-dimensional histograms, based on the Energy Test of Aslan and Zech, which provides more conclusive discrimination between histograms of data coming from different distributions than methods provided in a recent ROOT release.The Science and Technology Facilities Council, U

How Are Curiosity and Interest Different? Naive Bayes Classification of People's Beliefs

Researchers studying curiosity and interest note a lack of consensus in whether and how these important motivations for learning are distinct. Empirical attempts to distinguish them are impeded by this lack of conceptual clarity. Following a recent proposal that curiosity and interest are folk concepts, we sought to determine a non-expert consensus view on their distinction using machine learning methods. In Study 1, we demonstrate that there is a consensus in how they are distinguished, by training a Naïve Bayes classification algorithm to distinguish between free-text definitions of curiosity and interest (n = 396 definitions) and using cross-validation to test the classifier on two sets of data (main n = 196; additional n = 218). In Study 2, we demonstrate that the non-expert consensus is shared by experts and can plausibly underscore future empirical work, as the classifier accurately distinguished definitions provided by experts who study curiosity and interest (n = 92). Our results suggest a shared consensus on the distinction between curiosity and interest, providing a basis for much-needed conceptual clarity facilitating future empirical work. This consensus distinguishes curiosity as more active information seeking directed towards specific and previously unknown information. In contrast, interest is more pleasurable, in-depth, less momentary information seeking towards information in domains where people already have knowledge. However, we note that there are similarities between the concepts, as they are both motivating, involve feelings of wanting, and relate to knowledge acquisition