Development of a Game-Based e-Learning System with Augmented Reality for Improving Students’ Learning Performance

Currently, the school children usually spend a lot of time on the games in their recreational activities and some of them are even addicted to the games. Compared with other extracurricular activities, the e-Learning system reflects the fact that school children are very interested in the games. As a result, educators have lately craved to develop effective teaching activities that allow the school children to learn some subjects and to play the games simultaneously.  Therefore, this study is based on an e-Learning system which combines the serious game by Unity3D Game Engine with augmented reality (AR). Students are able to acquire their knowledge and to foster logical skills via this game-based e-Learning system.  According to its efficacy and utilities, this study has assessed and compared the game-based e-Learning system with the traditional learning and other e-Learning systems. The experimental results have indicated that the proposed game-based e-Learning system can outperform other existing systems

Novel Code Plagiarism Detection Based on Abstract Syntax Tree and Fuzzy Petri Nets

Those students who major in computer science and/or engineering are required to design program codes in a variety of programming languages. However, many students submit their source codes they get from the Internet or friends with no or few modifications. Detecting the code plagiarisms done bystudents is very time-consuming and leadsto the problems of unfair learning performance evaluation. This paper proposes a novel method to detect the source code plagiarisms by using a high-level fuzzy Petri net (HLFPN) based on abstract syntax tree (AST). First, the AST of each source code is generated after the lexical and syntactic analyses have been done. Second, token sequence is generated based on the AST. Using the AST can effectively detect the code plagiarism by changing the identifier or program statement order. Finally, the generated token sequences are compared with one another using an HLFPN to determine the code plagiarism. Furthermore, the experimental results have indicated that we can make better determination to detect the code plagiarism

Novel Shot Boundary Detection in News Streams Based on Fuzzy Petri Nets

With the advent of a digital era, people have encountered some difficulty in using and absorbing overwhelming information generated by technological advances in multimedia. Thus, the development of video summarization enables people to catch a general idea about videos in a short time. In this paper, we focus on the shot change, a part of the video summarization, to conduct an experimental sample on news programs. Moreover, a high-level fuzzy Petri net model is presented to describe the frame combination which indicates a shot boundary used for a video frame sequence in order to detect both cut transitions and gradual transitions. This study has used feature functions to estimate the direct shot change in consideration of video shot boundary detection which adopts the HLFPN model to find a threshold value. The experimental results manifest that the proposed system saves a lot of time and reduces the occurrence of improper shot changes caused by the motions of objects and cameras when comparing the proposed approach with other existing ones

Development and Evaluation of an Intelligent System for Calibrating Karaoke Lyrics Based on Fuzzy Petri Nets

In the home entertainment system, karaoke is a popular leisure facility in our daily life. Via the karaoke system, users can sing along with the lyrics based on the recordings of pop songs. However, a lot of karaoke systems can display lyrics semi-automatically. Traditionally, some lyrics are input manually and need to be synchronized with the tonal music stepwise, which is time-consuming. One of the famous musical phrase segmentation theories is a generative theory of tonal music, through which we have implemented a karaoke system in C# programming language. This intelligent system can automatically segment music phrases and use a high-level fuzzy Petri net model to calibrate the lyrics in pop songs. Fifty Chinese pop songs are selected to evaluate its performance. The experimental results have shown that the average calibration precision value (92.78%) and recall value (90.46%) are highly acceptable

Development and Evaluation of an Attendance Tracking System Using Smartphones with GPS and NFC

As usual, if many students are attending the lectures, their attendance tracking may become time consuming. Furthermore, there are some possibilities that students could cheat the lecturers of their attendance in the classroom. Therefore, a reliable method to manage the attendance tracking has become a critical issue. This paper aims to propose an attendance tracking system using an Android smartphone equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS) and Near Field Communication (NFC) technologies. Lecturers and students can constantly connect with one another by using smartphones to check and show their attendance automatically if they download and install the software Application (App). Finally, the experimental results have shown that our proposed system can successfully reduce some time for tracking students’ attendance. It also allows users to use their own Android smartphones without purchasing other electronic devices

The <i>DAO</i> Gene Is Associated with Schizophrenia and Interacts with Other Genes in the Taiwan Han Chinese Population

<div><p>Background</p><p>Schizophrenia is a highly heritable disease with a polygenic mode of inheritance. Many studies have contributed to our understanding of the genetic underpinnings of schizophrenia, but little is known about how interactions among genes affect the risk of schizophrenia. This study aimed to assess the associations and interactions among genes that confer vulnerability to schizophrenia and to examine the moderating effect of neuropsychological impairment.</p> <p>Methods</p><p>We analyzed 99 SNPs from 10 candidate genes in 1,512 subject samples. The permutation-based single-locus, multi-locus association tests, and a gene-based multifactorial dimension reduction procedure were used to examine genetic associations and interactions to schizophrenia.</p> <p>Results</p><p>We found that no single SNP was significantly associated with schizophrenia. However, a risk haplotype, namely <i>A</i>-<i>T</i>-<i>C</i> of the SNP triplet rsDAO7-rsDAO8-rsDAO13 of the <i>DAO</i> gene, was strongly associated with schizophrenia. Interaction analyses identified multiple between-gene and within-gene interactions. Between-gene interactions including <i>DAO</i>*<i>DISC1</i><b>,</b><i>DAO</i>*<i>NRG1</i> and <i>DAO</i>*<i>RASD2</i> and a within-gene interaction for <i>CACNG2</i> were found among schizophrenia subjects with severe sustained attention deficits, suggesting a modifying effect of impaired neuropsychological functioning. Other interactions such as the within-gene interaction of <i>DAO</i> and the between-gene interaction of <i>DAO</i> and <i>PTK2B</i> were consistently identified regardless of stratification by neuropsychological dysfunction. Importantly, except for the within-gene interaction of <i>CACNG2</i>, all of the identified risk haplotypes and interactions involved SNPs from <i>DAO</i>.</p> <p>Conclusions</p><p>These results suggest that <i>DAO</i>, which is involved in the N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor regulation, signaling and glutamate metabolism, is the master gene of the genetic associations and interactions underlying schizophrenia. Besides, the interaction between <i>DAO</i> and <i>RASD2</i> has provided an insight in integrating the glutamate and dopamine hypotheses of schizophrenia.</p> </div

A schematic diagram to show the relation among genes that involved in the observed gene-gene interactions.

<p>The top, bottom, and left side components represent the pre-synaptic neuron, post-synaptic neuron, and glial cells, respectively. Three types of receptors (NMDA receptor, ERBB4 receptor, and AMPA receptor) are drawn on the post-synaptic neuron. All the genes involved in the gene-gene interactions are shown in boldface. <i>NRG1</i> is the ligand for ERBB4 receptor, which may trigger the long term potentiation by way of the <i>PTK2B</i> protein activation. <i>DISC1</i> may stabilize serine racemase (SR), which will convert L-Serine to d-Serine (d-Ser). The black triangle on the side of NMDA receptor represents d-Ser, which is a co-agonist of this receptor. Both NMDA and AMPA receptors are calcium channels, which may increase calcium influx upon activation. Two molecules of <i>CACNG2</i> (shown by the grey oval) were found on each AMPA receptor. Even though <i>CACNG2</i> is a subunit of AMPA receptor, this protein is explicitly drawn in order to show its role in gene-gene interaction.</p

Within-gene and between-gene interactions in schizophrenia for the unstratified and CPT-stratified interaction analyses.

<p>The unstratified interaction plot is at the center, and the CPT-stratified plots with the stratum name are located in the four corners. Stratum name and sample size of cases and controls are provided in the title for each panel. Gene name, the number of SNPs in the gene, and the located chromosome are provided around each circle. If an interaction was identified, the SNP id along with its location in the gene (in parentheses) are provided. Abbreviations for SNP locations are: 3′, 3′ untranslated region; 5′, 5′ untranslated region; I, intron; E, exon; s, synonymous SNP; n, near-gene SNP; m, missense SNP. Interaction candidates with a pFDR <0.05 and ≥0.05 are connected by a solid line and dashed line, respectively, and the level of testing accuracy is represented by the line color from light green (less accurate) to dark green (highly accurate).</p