Cognitive,social and teaching presence in a virtual world and a text chat

Using a framework of cognitive, social, and teaching presence, the nature of learning experiences in a three-dimensional virtual world environment (Second Life) and a text-chat learning environment without visuals (TeachNet) were investigated. A mixed method of code frequencies, coherence graphs, interviews, and a survey was used. The results revealed that the TeachNet debates included more cognitive presence codes that indicate higher levels of cognitive processing than in SL debates. The teams were significantly different from each other in the collaboration style for developing arguments and in the ways to use utterances associated with cognitive, social, and teaching presences, and the groups’ collaboration style became more established with more experience with the tasks. The three critical factors–tool, tasks and group cohesion–that affect cognitive, teaching, and social presence are discussed.     

Service improvement by business process management using customer complaints in financial service industry

In financial service industry, service improvement should be considered from process viewpoint and customer viewpoint because the value creation is ultimately linked with internal business processes on the back office and customers are involved as a co-producer of value. In this perspective, customer complaints through call centers are adequate to support the analysis for service improvement in financial service industry. In this study, we propose a web-based decision support system for business process management employing customer complaints, namely Voice of the Customer (VOC), and its handling data for service improvement. It involves VOC conversion for data enrichment and includes analysis of summarization, exception and comparison. The proposed system is evaluated on a major credit card company in South Korea.     

Linkless Octree Using Multi‐Level Perfect Hashing

The standard C/C++ implementation of a spatial partitioning data structure, such as octree and quadtree, is often inefficient in terms of storage requirements particularly when the memory overhead for maintaining parent‐to‐child pointers is significant with respect to the amount of actual data in each tree node. In this work, we present a novel data structure that implements uniform spatial partitioning without storing explicit parent‐to‐child pointer links. Our linkless tree encodes the storage locations of subdivided nodes using perfect hashing while retaining important properties of uniform spatial partitioning trees, such as coarse‐to‐fine hierarchical representation, efficient storage usage, and efficient random accessibility. We demonstrate the performance of our linkless trees using image compression and path planning examples.     

Ontology-based mobile augmented reality in cultural heritage sites: information modeling and user study

Augmented reality (AR) has received much attention in the cultural heritage domain as an interactive medium for requesting and accessing information regarding heritage sites. In this study, we developed a mobile AR system based on Semantic Web technology to provide contextual information about cultural heritage sites. Most location-based AR systems are designed to present simple information about a point of interest (POI), but the proposed system offers information related to various aspects of cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible, linked to the POI. This is achieved via an information modeling framework where a cultural heritage ontology is used to aggregate heterogeneous data and semantically connect them with each other. We extracted cultural heritage data from five web databases and modeled contextual information for a target heritage site (Injeongjeon Hall and its vicinity in Changdeokgung Palace in South Korea) using the selected ontology. We then implemented a mobile AR application and conducted a user study to assess the learning and engagement impacts of the proposed system. We found that the application provides an agreeable user experience in terms of its affective, cognitive, and operative features. The results of our analysis showed that specific usage patterns were significant with regard to learning outcomes. Finally, we explored how the study’s key findings can provide practical design guidance for system designers to enhance mobile AR information systems for heritage sites, and to show system designers how to support particular usage patterns in order to accommodate specific user experiences better.

     

Current manufacturing technologies for TFT‐LCDs

Abstract— TFT‐LCD panels for notebook‐PC applications requires a thin and light form factor, low power consumption, and good display quality, whereas the desktop monitor has different requirements such as large panel size, wide viewing angle, high resolution, brightness, etc. However, for the fifth‐generation of mass production, current panel technologies have to improve in order to cope with these requirements. In this article, various approaches to the manufacturing technologies of next‐generation TFT‐LCDs are discussed.     

Dynamic diamond anvil cell (dDAC): a novel device for studying the dynamic-pressure properties of materials

We have developed a unique device, a dynamic diamond anvil cell (dDAC), which repetitively applies a time-dependent load/pressure profile to a sample. This capability allows studies of the kinetics of phase transitions and metastable phases at compression (strain) rates of up to 500 GPa/s (approximately 0.16 s(-1) for a metal). Our approach adapts electromechanical piezoelectric actuators to a conventional diamond anvil cell design, which enables precise specification and control of a time-dependent applied load/pressure. Existing DAC instrumentation and experimental techniques are easily adapted to the dDAC to measure the properties of a sample under the varying load/pressure conditions. This capability addresses the sparsely studied regime of dynamic phenomena between static research (diamond anvil cells and large volume presses) and dynamic shock-driven experiments (gas guns, explosive, and laser shock). We present an overview of a variety of experimental measurements that can be made with this device.     

Distribution and determinants of maximal physical work capacity of Korean male metal workers

The distribution of maximal physical work capacity (MPWC) can be used to establish an upper limit for energy expenditure during work (EEwork). If physically demanding work has wearing effects, there will be a negative relationship between MPWC and workload. This study was conducted to investigate the distribution of MPWC among Korean metal workers and to examine the relationship between workload and MPWC. MPWC was estimated with a bicycle ergometer using a submaximal test. Energy expenditure was estimated by measuring heart rates during work. The study subjects were 507 male employees from several metal industries in Korea. They had a lower absolute VO2max than the Caucasian populations described in previous studies. The older workers had a lower physical capacity and a greater overload at work. A negative relationship was found between MPWC and workload across all age groups. Upper limits for EEwork for all age groups and for older age groups are recommended based on the 5th percentile value of MPWC.     

Severe motor disability affects functional cortical integration in the context of brain-computer interface (BCI) use

The purpose of this study was to investigate cortical interaction between brain regions in people with and without severe motor disability during brain-computer interface (BCI) operation through coherence analysis. Eighteen subjects, including six patients with cerebral palsy (CP) and three patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), participated. The results showed (1) the existence of BCI performance difference caused by severe motor disability; (2) different coherence patterns between participants with and without severe motor disability during BCI operation and (3) effects of motor disability on cortical connections varying in the brain regions for the different frequency bands, indicating reduced cortical differentiation and specialisation. Participants with severe neuromuscular impairments, as compared with the able-bodied group, recruited more cortical regions to compensate for the difficulties caused by their motor disability, reflecting a less efficient operating strategy for the BCI task. This study demonstrated that coherence analysis can be applied to examine the ways cortical networks cooperate with each other during BCI tasks. PRACTITIONER SUMMARY: Few studies have investigated the electrophysiological underpinnings of differences in BCI performance. This study contributes by assessing neuronal synchrony among brain regions. Our findings revealed that severe motor disability causes more cortical areas to be recruited to perform the BCI task, indicating reduced cortical differentiation and specialisation.     

Localizing slab identification numbers in factory scene images

This paper deals with algorithms for text localization and character segmentation in images for process automation in the steel-making industry. Each character which comprises slab identification numbers may be corrupted severely before it is captured by network cameras. Therefore, proper processing is required to localize the target texts successfully. In this paper, we propose (1) a method to evaluate the closeness of an edge patch to the form of a closed contour, (2) an edge inspection method to determine character colors and estimate font thickness, and (3) three reasonable binarization methods to increase the performance of the algorithm for the detection of the left and right boundaries of the text rectangle. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithms are reliable.