"BALANCE" ... IN PRESCHOOL: A PROPOSAL ON HOW TO TEACH NATURAL SCIENCES USING EDUCATIONAL ROBOTICS

This current study is a teaching proposal that approaches the concept of balance in an interdisciplinary way in kindergarten. Based on the Greek Kindergarten Curriculum, an educational intervention is proposed in the context of the thematic unit: "Child and Environment" and falls under the second axis: "Natural Environment and Interaction". When the infants build a simple seesaw machine ("robotic" seesaw) using the LEGO® Education Early Simple Machines Set, they start wondering about how it works. Acting collaboratively, the infants’ experiment with simple machines and make assumptions, each time experimenting according to the given instructions. Throughout the learning process, the teacher provides clear instructions and completes the findings of the infants, in order to draw the final conclusions that will lead to the solution of the problem. In this way, the infants are given the opportunity to develop computational thinking skills that can potentially open up new professional horizons in the future.  Article visualizations

Energy Savings via Harnessing Partial Packets in Body Area Networks

This work considers the incorporation, implications and potential energy savings of partial packet recovery schemes in Body Area Networks (BANs). Received packets which have not been fully corrected by the physical layer, called partial, are discarded by the vast majority of BAN protocols, as opposed to valid packets, which satisfy the error detection check and are propagated to higher layers. In typical networks using ARQ protocols, dropping partial packets results in retransmissions. However, because these packets contain useful information, partial packet recovery schemes have been proposed with demonstrated throughput and reliability benefits, targeting mostly wireless LANs. In order to quantify the potential energy benefits of harnessing partial packets in BANs, we use an experimental setup with four sensors mounted on a human body, transmitting information to a receiving node in a typical office environment. By precisely modeling the state transitions and energy consumption of sensors, we compare the efficiency of a baseline ARQ protocol against a scheme which leverages information in partial packets. Our results indicate that exploiting partial packets reduces on average the energy consumption of our sensors by 8--20%. The energy savings are pronounced in challenged channel conditions of high PER, where they can be up to 50%

Μια διδακτική πρόταση για το δημοτικό τραγούδι μέσα απο την ερμηνεία της Αθανασίας Αλεξανδροπούλου

Η παρούσα εργασία έχει σαν στόχο την δημιουργία μιας διδακτικής πάνω στο δημοτικό τραγούδι, με αφετηρία το τραγουδιστικό ύφος της ευρύτερης περιοχής του νομού Αχαΐας, μέσα από πέντε τραγούδια που ερμηνεύει η Αθανασία Αλεξανδροπούλου. Προς επίτευξη αυτού του στόχου, η εργασία κινείται ως εξής. Πρώτα τοποθετεί χρονικά και ορίζει τον όρο δημοτικό τραγούδι, στη συνέχεια, κάνοντας βιβλιογραφική ανασκόπηση, γίνεται αναφορά στις καταγραφές τόσο των ρεπερτορίων αυτών, όσο και στις καταγραφές και την διαχείριση των ποικιλμάτων από άλλους ερευνητές, καθώς και στα προβλήματα που προκύπτουν. Στην συνέχεια μέσω της ανάλυσης των καταγραφών παρουσιάζεται ένα ασκησιολόγιο με τρία επίπεδα δυσκολίας, ενώ οι καταγραφές δίνονται και εμπλουτισμένες με επιπλέον ποικίλματα που προτείνονται από τον συγγραφέα. Τέλος, στο κομμάτι της διδασκαλίας κατατίθενται και οι προσωπικές απόψεις του συγγραφέα. Η προσέγγιση που υιοθετείται από τον ερευνητή είναι διττή, μιας και το συγκεκριμένο τραγουδιστικό ύφος που καταπιάνεται η εργασία, αποτελεί κομμάτι του αντικειμένου του ιδίου. Κλείνοντας, θα λέγαμε πως η ουσία αυτής της έρευνας, συμπυκνώνεται σε δυο παραμέτρους. Πρώτον, στην χρήση νέων εργαλείων ανάλυσης, όσον αφορά το συγκεκριμένο ρεπερτόριο, αλλά και στην εύρεση νέων τρόπων να εφαρμοστούν, στοχεύοντας στην εκ βάθους κατανόησή του. Δευτερευόντως, αποτελεί την αρχή μιας διαδικασίας κωδικοποίησης των λαϊκών ρεπερτορίων της υπαίθρου, που θα συμβάλει γενικότερα στην εκπαιδευτική διαδικασία.The aim of this work is to create a didactic course on folk song, starting from the singing style of the wider region of the prefecture of Achaia, through five songs 4 performed by Athanasia Alexandropoulou. To achieve this goal, the work proceeds as follows. First it chronologically places and defines the term folk song, then making a bibliographic review reference is made to the records of both these repertoires, as well as to the records and management of the varieties by other researchers, as well as to the problems that arise. Then, through the analysis of the records, an exercise book with three levels of difficulty is presented, while the records are given and enriched with additional variations proposed by the author. Finally, in the teaching part, the personal views of the author are also presented. The approach adopted by the researcher is two-fold, since the specific singing style that the work deals with is part of its object. In conclusion, we would say that the essence of this research is concentrated in two parameters. Firstly, in the use of new analysis tools, regarding the specific repertoire, but also in finding new ways to apply them, aiming at its in-depth understanding. Secondly, it is the beginning of a codification process of rural folk repertoires, which will contribute to the educational process in general

Experimental study of the interplay of channel and network coding in low power sensor applications

In this paper, we evaluate the performance of random linear network coding (RLNC) in low data rate indoor sensor applications operating in the ISM frequency band. We also investigate the results of its synergy with forward error correction (FEC) codes at the PHY-layer in a joint channel-network coding (JCNC) scheme. RLNC is an emerging coding technique which can be used as a packet-level erasure code, usually implemented at the network layer, which increases data reliability against channel fading and severe interference, while FEC codes are mainly used for correction of random bit errors within a received packet. The hostile wireless environment that low power sensors usually operate in, with significant interference from nearby networks, motivates us to consider a joint coding scheme and examine the applicability of RLNC as an erasure code in such a coding structure. Our analysis and experiments are performed using a custom low power sensor node, which integrates on-chip a low-power 2.4 GHz transmitter and an accelerator implementing a multi-rate convolutional code and RLNC, in a typical office environment. According to measurement results, RLNC of code rate 4/8 can provide an effective SNR improvement of about 3.4 dB, outperforming a PHY-layer FEC code of the same code rate, at a PER of 10[superscript -2]. In addition, RLNC performs very well when used in conjunction with a PHY-layer FEC code as a JCNC scheme, offering an overall coding gain of 5.6 dB.Focus Center Research Program. Focus Center for Circuit & System Solutions. Semiconductor Research Corporation. Interconnect Focus Cente

Energy-Efficient Time-Stampless Adaptive Nonuniform Sampling

Nowadays, since more and more battery-operated devices are involved in applications with continuous sensing, development of an efficient sampling mechanisms is an important issue for these applications. In this paper, we investigate power efficiency aspects of a recently proposed adaptive nonuniform sampling. This sampling scheme minimizes the energy consumption of the sampling process, which is approximately proportional to sampling rate. The main characteristics of our method are that, first, sampling times do not need to be transmitted, since the receiver can compute them by using a function of previously taken samples, and second, only innovative samples are taken from the signal of interest, reducing the sampling rate and therefore the energy consumption. We call this scheme Time-Stampless Adaptive Nonuniform Sampling (TANS). TANS can be used in several scenarios, showing promising results in terms of energy savings, and can potentially enable the development of new applications that require continuous signals sensing, such as applications related to health monitoring, location tracking and entertainment

A logical approach to working with biological databases

It has been argued before that Prolog is a strong candidate for research and code develop-ment in bioinformatics and computational biology. This position has been based on boththe intrinsic strengths of Prolog and recent advances in its technologies. Here we strengthenthe case for the deployment and penetration of Prolog into bioinformatics, by introduc-ingbiodb, a comprehensive and extensible system for working with biological data. Wefocus on databases that translate between biological products and product-to-productinteractions, the latter of which can be visualised as graphs. This library allows easy ac-cess to high quality data in two formats: as Prolog fact files and as SQLite databases.On-demand downloading of prepacked data files in these two formats is supported in alloperating system architectures as well as reconstruction from latest data files from thecurated databases. The methods used to deliver the data are transparent to the user andthe data are delivered in he familiar format of Prolog facts

Energy-aware network coding circuit and system design

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 73-78).Network Coding (NC) has been shown to provide several advantages in communication networks in terms of throughput, data robustness and security. However, its applicability to networks with resource constrained nodes, like Body Area Networks (BANs), has been questioned due to its complexity requirements. Proposed NC implementations are based on high-end CPUs and GPUs, consuming hundreds of Watts, without providing enough insight about its energy requirements. As more and more mobile devices, sensors and other low power systems are used in modern communication protocols, a highly efficient and optimized implementation of NC is required. In this work, an effort is made to bridge NC theory with ultra low power applications. For this reason, an energy-scalable, low power accelerator is designed in order to explore the minimum energy requirements of NC. Based on post-layout simulation results using a TSMC 65nm process, the proposed encoder consumes 22.15 uW at 0.4V, achieving a processing throughput of 80 MB/s. These numbers reveal that NC can indeed be incorporated into resource constrained networks with battery-operated or even energy scavenging nodes. Apart from the hardware design, a new partial packet recovery mechanism based on NC, called PPRNC, is proposed. PPRNC exploits information contained in partial packets, similarly to existing Hybrid-ARQ schemes, but with a PHY-agnostic approach. Minimization of the number of retransmitted packets saves transmission energy and results in higher total network throughput, making PPRNC an attractive candidate for energy constrained networks, such as BANs, as well as modern, high-speed wireless mesh networks. The proposed mechanism is analyzed and implemented using commercial development boards, validating its ability to extract information contained from partial packets.by Georgios Angelopoulos.S.M