Usability Evaluation And Correspondence Analysis Of Smartphone Operating Systems

User-centered smartphone interface design is important so that consumers can easily learn about and begin to use newly purchased smartphones. This study first evaluates the effectiveness, efficiency, and user satisfaction of smartphone interfaces in Taiwan in terms of two representational operating systems: Android and iPhone OS. The usability evaluation includes observational experiments, user questionnaires, and the Wilcoxon sign-rank test. This study then conducts the correspondence analysis to summarize positive/ negative evaluations of usage and specification for smartphone OS. In observational experiments, a total of 48 participants with no previous smartphone experience on using smartphone with Android and iPhone OS are asked to perform five common phone tasks. All experiments are recorded and observed. Results and observations are discussed to attain a closer match between user needs and the performance of smartphone OS

Hydrodynamical Simulations of the Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1097

NGC 1097 is a nearby barred spiral galaxy believed to be interacting with the elliptical galaxy NGC 1097A located to its northwest. It hosts a Seyfert 1 nucleus surrounded by a circumnuclear starburst ring. Two straight dust lanes connected to the ring extend almost continuously out to the bar. The other ends of the dust lanes attach to two main spiral arms. To provide a physical understanding of its structural and kinematical properties, two-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations have been carried out. Numerical calculations reveal that many features of the gas morphology and kinematics can be reproduced provided that the gas flow is governed by a gravitational potential associated with a slowly rotating strong bar. By including the self-gravity of the gas disk in our calculation, we have found the starburst ring to be gravitationally unstable which is consistent with the observation in \citet{hsieh11}. Our simulations show that the gas inflow rate is 0.17 M_\sun yr$^{-1}$ into the region within the starburst ring even after its formation, leading to the coexistence of both a nuclear ring and a circumnuclear disk.Comment: 32 pages, 14 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in the Ap

Extending the Technology Acceptance Model to Investigate Impact of Embodied Games on Learning of Xiao-zhuan()

AbstractThis research focuses on topic of e-learning of Xiao-zhuan through digital Embodied games as a brand new way of creative learning method for Xiao-zhuan. TAM, Technology Acceptance Model, is the methodology in this research. Theory of perceived playfulness is also adopted to analyze the learning of Xiao-zhuan. Subjects in this research are 45 sophomores of the Department of Chinese Literature in National Taiwan Normal University. This research adopts questionnaire survey method, then refers to students’ paper scores on the test. The results of this research are as follows: Firstly, “Perceived Usefulness” has the significant influence on “Learning Effectiveness” and “Attitude toward Using the Embodied games”. Secondly, “Perceived Ease of Use” has the influence on “Perceived Playfulness”. Thirdly, “Perceived Playfulness” has the significant influence on “Attitude toward Using the Embodied games”

Face recognition using nonparametric-weighted Fisherfaces

This study presents an appearance-based face recognition scheme called the nonparametric-weighted Fisherfaces (NW-Fisherfaces). Pixels in a facial image are considered as coordinates in a high-dimensional space and are transformed into a face subspace for analysis by using nonparametric-weighted feature extraction (NWFE). According to previous studies of hyperspectral image classification, NWFE is a powerful tool for extracting hyperspectral image features. The Fisherfaces method maximizes the ratio of between-class scatter to that of within-class scatter. In this study, the proposed NW-Fisherfaces weighted the between-class scatter to emphasize the boundary structure of the transformed face subspace and, therefore, enhances the separability for different persons' face. The proposed NW-Fisherfaces was compared with Orthogonal Laplacianfaces, Eigenfaces, Fisherfaces, direct linear discriminant analysis, and null space linear discriminant analysis methods for tests on five facial databases. Experimental results showed that the proposed approach outperforms other feature extraction methods for most databases. © 2012 Li et al

Exploring Individuals’ Loyalty To Online Support Groups From the Perspective Of Social Support

Prior research indicates that social support allows individuals to have additional skills to handle stresses, enhance self-esteem, and increase psychological well-being. Online social networks have become an emerging and important source of social support. However, little research has been done to explore how IT usage may improve the well-being and life quality of individuals, especially patients. Little research has been done to empirically examine individuals’ loyalty toward online social groups from the perspective of social support. This study aims to develop an integrated research model to the impact of online social support on psychological well-being and group identification, and individuals’ subsequent loyalty toward online social groups. Online social support group was operationalized as a second-order construct with four components: informational, emotional, esteem, and network supports. Data collected from 537 users of online support groups for mothers in Taiwan provide strong support for the research model. The results indicate that online social support is positively associated with psychological well-being and group identification, which in turn have a positive effect on moms’ loyalty toward online social groups. Implications for theory and practice and suggestions for future research are provided