Revisiting the Intrinsic Integration Hypothesis

The Intrinsic Integration Hypothesis proposes that educational games that use the core game mechanisms to teach the learning material are not only more fun to play, but also more effective at communicating the target knowledge. My thesis tests the Intrinsic Integration Hypothesis with two educational versions of Battleship that were designed for my experiment. This study examined the learning gains and motivation of 58 participants who interacted with either the intrinsic or extrinsic version for 35 minutes. The results contradicted previous findings in support of the Intrinsic Integration Hypothesis: participants reported that both games were similarly motivating as measured by questionnaire data, and participants who practised with the extrinsically-integrated version of the game learned more as measured by pretest to posttest gains. This work contributes empirical data to the debate concerning intrinsic integration, and it raises concerns about the need for transfer and increased cognitive load in these educational games

AMUSE: autonomic management of ubiquitous e-Health systems

Future e-Health systems will consist of low-power on-body wireless sensors attached to mobile users that interact with an ubiquitous computing environment to monitor the health and well being of patients in hospitals or at home. Patients or health practitioners have very little technical computing expertise so these systems need to be self-configuring and self-managing with little or no user input. More importantly, they should adapt autonomously to changes resulting from user activity, device failure, and the addition or loss of services. We propose the Self-Managed Cell (SMC) as an architectural pattern for all such types of ubiquitous computing applications and use an e-Health application in which on-body sensors are used to monitor a patient living in their home as an exemplar. We describe the services comprising the SMC and discuss cross-SMC interactions as well as the composition of SMCs into larger structures

Aggression in high school sports: a qualitative study of coaches' perspectives.

M. Ed. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg 2015.This study explored the phenomenon of aggression in high school sports, focusing on the perspectives of high school coaches. The research was motivated by three research questions, namely: (1) What types of aggression are observed by coaches in high school sports? (2) What systemic factors do coaches attribute to the expression of aggressive behaviours in high school sports? (3) How do coaches encourage and/or discourage aggressive behaviour in high school sports? Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from a sample population of participant coaches, and this data was analysed with the aim of identifying common themes. The research findings suggest aggression to be a complex and dynamic phenomenon, as seen from the perspectives of high school sports coaches. These findings also offer insights into how aggression may be effectively addressed, by focusing on elements such as clarity, consistency and communication within the context of high school sports

El saber médico, entre la filosofía y la literatura

La Carrera de Medicina de la FCM (UNR), incluye módulos electivos, centrados en la formación de un médico crítico de su práctica, investigador, capaz de resignificar su tarea asistencial, su rol docente. El Saber Médico, entre la Filosofía y la Literatura invita a repensar las condiciones en que se resuelven los procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje del conjunto de conocimientos acerca de la salud y de la enfermedad humanas, una práctica racional para preservar y/o restablecer ciertos equilibrios a favor del bienestar de los sujetos. Así entendido el Saber Médico convoca a la construcción plural y multívoca de su objeto de estudio.Facultad de Ciencias Médica

Platte TFI Program -Innovative Solutions to Hydrostatic Testing

ABSTRACT Platte Pipe Line experienced an operational failure in July 1997. This failure was attributable to operational pressure cycle fatigue crack growth of a hook-crack in the longitudinal seam weld. This defect had grown to failure over a 24-year time period since it had been hydrostatically tested in 1973. In response to this failure, the Department of Transportation (DOT) Office of Pipeline Safety (OPS) issued a corrective order to verify the integrity of this pipeline through either hydrostatic testing or an approved in-line inspection program. An emerging technology, a Transverse Field Inspection (TFI) tool, was identified as a possible solution to this problem. Even though this inspection tool had not been used previously to identify seam-weld defects, this technology certainly showed promise. The results of our program show that the TFI program resulted in less impact on the operations of this pipeline and provided greater assurance than hydrostatic testing for the longterm operational reliability of this pipeline system. This paper describes the steps required to use this inspection tool for the Platte Pipe Line rehabilitation program

Optimal Parallel Schedules

AI planning research is weak in the area of distributed applications. This paper addresses the problem of generating plans for an initially unspecified number of identical actors. The solution presented decomposes linear (single actor) plans into dependency graphs. Two algorithms which use these graphs in the construction of parallel (multiple actor) plans are presented, discussed, and compared. i Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 The Solution 2 2.1 Step 1: Computing the dependencies of a plan : : : : : : : : : : : : 3 2.2 Step 2: Removing Redundant Links : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 5 2.3 Step 3: Assigning actors : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 7 2.3.1 A na ive approach : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 7 2.3.2 A recursive approach : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 8 2.3.3 Comparing Solutions : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 10 3 Problems 13 4 Conclusions 14 A Subgoal solution to part 3 15 Bibliography 19 ii 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1 I..

Time Extensions of Petri Nets

This article gives an introduction to time extensions of Petri nets. Two popular methods for adding time to Petri nets are presented, and are shown to be equivalent for most cases. The problem of bounding the execution time for these extensions is discussed. Numerous references are given to further reading in each area covered