CCLI-using media computation to attract and retain students in computing

Issued as final reportNational Science Foundation (U.S.

Automatic Mapping of NES Games with Mappy

Game maps are useful for human players, general-game-playing agents, and data-driven procedural content generation. These maps are generally made by hand-assembling manually-created screenshots of game levels. Besides being tedious and error-prone, this approach requires additional effort for each new game and level to be mapped. The results can still be hard for humans or computational systems to make use of, privileging visual appearance over semantic information. We describe a software system, Mappy, that produces a good approximation of a linked map of rooms given a Nintendo Entertainment System game program and a sequence of button inputs exploring its world. In addition to visual maps, Mappy outputs grids of tiles (and how they change over time), positions of non-tile objects, clusters of similar rooms that might in fact be the same room, and a set of links between these rooms. We believe this is a necessary step towards developing larger corpora of high-quality semantically-annotated maps for PCG via machine learning and other applications.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures. Appearing at Procedural Content Generation Workshop 201

Sixth World Wide Web survey

Issued as Final report, Project C-50-67

Introduction to media computation: a new CS1 approach aimed at non-majors and under-represented populations

Issued as final reportNational Science Foundation (U.S.

The Effects of Fatigue on a Dual-Task Postural Control Measure

CONTEXT: Concussions are a major concern in sport and healthcare professionals are recognizing its profoundness in the impact it has on athletes. There may be limitations in the current approach to assessments among each individual evaluation involved; however, the combination of all three assessments adds to its strength and determining the overall understanding of the concussion and its effects. Any measure of assessment that connects underlying issues arising from concussion to help decrease long-term impairments by returning to play prematurely, risking further injury, is essential. The need for a dual-task assessment delivers an increased sensitivity to the assessment by combining two tasks forcing the individual to divide their attention. It is also important to determine if fatigue is a factor on the ability to complete a dual-task, the same way in which an individual would be asked to do during sport performance while fatigued. OBJECTIVE: The purpose is to evaluate the effect of fatigue on a dual-task postural control measure. DESIGN: Repeated measures. SETTING: Research laboratory. PATIENTS OR OTHER PARTICIPANTS: Sixty healthy, collegiate males and females (30 experimental 21.03±1.92 yrs., 30 control 20.70±1.93 yrs.) performed a dual-task balance test (Quick-Tap Concussion Assessment Protocol [QT-CAP]) at three specific times (baseline(T1), post-fatigue intervention(T2) and post-recovery(T3)). All participants took visual cues from a computer and were asked to respond by reaching with a specific leg to touch in a specific direction. INTERVENTION: Anthropometric measures were taken before all testing and other measures of performance, such as heart rate, rating of perceived exertion and vertical jump, were measured at each time. Testing was completed during one test session. Baseline (T1) testing on the QT-CAP protocol was completed followed by the experimental group participating in the fatigue protocol while the control group rested for ten minutes between T1 and T2. Post-fatigue intervention (T2) followed the fatigue protocol and the ten minute rest period for both groups. Both groups rested for an additional 15 minutes and then completed T3 testing. The fatigue protocol included completion of the PACER test until self-reported, complete exhaustion. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Height, weight and age were used as descriptives to determine any differences between groups. Heart rate, RPE and vertical jump were used to determine level of fatigue within each individual. The QT-CAP protocol measures error scores in each group across three different time points. RESULTS: During T1 and T2, the control group had a significant increase in their QT-CAP scores (T1: 27.60 ±2.90; T2: 29.52 ± 4.29). The experimental group showed no significant increase in their QT-CAP scores (T1: 28.77 ± 2.90; T2: 28.93 ± 3.40), which could be due to the fatigue protocol. The experimental group had the opposite effect from T2-T3 and did show an increase in the QT-CAP scores (T2: 28.93 ±3.40; T3: 30.37 ± 2.06). The control group did not show any significant increase from T2-T3 on the QT-CAP (T2: 29.53 ± 4.29; T3: 29.87 ± 2.26). CONCLUSION: The control group showed an initial increase in their QT-CAP scores, showing a potential learning effect on the dual-task measure and then had less of an increase in their QT-CAP scores during T3. The experimental group showed a decreased learning effect after the fatigue protocol which helps to explain that fatigue does have an effect on the dual-task postural control measure. Following their 15 minute rest, an increase in QT-CAP scores shows the learning effect in the experimental group