Interactive Computer Applications Research Articles

GESUS, an Interactive Computer Application for Teaching and Learning the Space Groups of Symmetry

This paper describes a digital application designed for learning Space Groups of Symmetry (SGS). It teaches how to recognize the operations performed by the symmetry elements, both point (or 2D) operators (proper and improper rotations, including mirroring, inversion, and other rotoinversions), and space (or 3D) operators (screw axes and glide planes), as well as their combinations with the translations of the lattice. The software applies a 3D space vision to identify the elements of symmetry compatible with the proposed structural models. The symbols of internationally accepted representation are used. The system, class, and space group of the crystal that agree with the proposed model are solved. Two settings are taken into account in the Monoclinic system. The application self-evaluates and assesses the knowledge acquired, allowing each exercise to be re-done until it is correctly completed with the appropriate recommendations. This application constitutes a useful and easy-to-use tool for SGS learning. It is aimed at beginner students of crystallography, with elementary knowledge about elements of symmetry, Bravais lattices, crystal classes, and wallpaper groups.

PENGEMBANGAN APLIKASI MODUL INTERAKTIF KOMPUTER DAN JARINGAN DASAR BERBASIS ANDROID

Educational goal is for improving the quality of human resources, forming character and developing the potential of students to become useful human beings for the nation and the society . to achieve these educational goals, the quality of education must be improved through learning facilities and the learning process. Based on researcher observations at Vocational school 6 Padang, especially on computer subjects and basic networks, it was found teachers have not used interactive modules when learning activities. this affects the student learning outcomes which are still many that have not reached the minimum criteria standard (KKM)\. the design of this interactive module application aims to produce learning media that make it easier for students to learn computer subject matter and basic networks wherever they are. the design of this application uses Prototyping development method with android-based java programming with Android Studio application software (version 3.3) with Gradle 4.4. This research produces an interactive computer application module and basic network based on Android, the features that exist in this interactive module application are learning material, videos, and exercises that are in accordance with the learning material in the 2013 curriculum. this can facilitate users in understanding computer and basic network material.Keywords: interactive modules, learning media, computers and basic networks.

Asking about the last four drinking occasions on a tablet computer as a way to record alcohol consumption in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians: a validation

BackgroundAlcohol consumption among Indigenous Australians can be irregular, depending on social and geographic context. The Finnish method uses the last four drinking occasions to estimate drinking quantity and pattern. The Grog Survey App is an interactive and visual tablet computer application which uses touch-screen technology to deliver questions on drinking.MethodsAlcohol consumption recorded on the Grog Survey App using the last four occasions (Finnish) method was compared with a clinical interview conducted by an Indigenous Australian health professional. To assess convergent validity, Spearman’s ranked correlations between consumption estimates from the App and from interview were calculated. Sensitivity and specificity analyses were used to compare how well the App and clinical interview agreed when classifying drinkers’ risk. To assess criterion validity, average grams alcohol per day as estimated by the App (and by interview) were compared against presence of self-reported withdrawal tremors (from App or interview). Test–retest reliability was assessed by correlations between measures of alcohol consumption recorded on two occasions.ResultsThe App recorded higher numbers of standard drinks consumed per drinking occasion than the interview. There was reasonable agreement between the App and interview across common reference periods (sensitivity 92.7%, specificity 69.8%, short-term risk; sensitivity 70.7%, specificity 68.8%, long-term risk). Average consumption recorded by the App was as good or better predictor of withdrawal tremors than consumption as estimated by interview.ConclusionsThe Finnish method, as delivered by the App, offers an innovative way to collect survey data on alcohol in a population with an intermittent drinking pattern.

Developing the US Biomass Residential Heating Market

The objective of this article is to help biomass heating industry in its marketing tasks, by helping the industry segment its consumers so that marketing efforts can be targeted at households that will purchase and use biomass home heating. To achieve this objective, the author classifies US households using structural characteristics (for example, year the home was built) and function or behavioral features of the households (for example, life goals or values of the head of household). Gaining social approval, living an active or exciting life, and a mature understanding of life are the primary motives that influence biomass equipment purchase. One-in-three households in the nation possess these values and hence are the ideal targets for the industry. Since not all geographical locations are equally attractive, the author has developed an interactive computer application that insures that managers target households that meets business goals. Future research on home heating can build on this approach to deduce theorems about consumer purchases of green-energy products.

Interactive numerals

Although Arabic numerals (like ‘2016’ and ‘3.14’) are ubiquitous, we show that in interactive computer applications they are often misleading and surprisingly unreliable. We introduce interactive numerals as a new concept and show, like Roman numerals and Arabic numerals, interactive numerals introduce another way of using and thinking about numbers. Properly understanding interactive numerals is essential for all computer applications that involve numerical data entered by users, including finance, medicine, aviation and science.

INTERACTIVE COMPUTER APPLICATION FOR PREDICTING PERFORMANCE INDICATORS OF A TRACTOR-CHISEL PLOW SYSTEM IN C-SHARP ENVIRONMENT

An interactive computer application in C-Sharp language was developed to predict the performance indicator of a tractor-chisel plow system. Moreover, the purpose of such application was to aid agricultural engineers in the field of farm machinery management to select suitable inputs to make proper matching of a tractor and a chisel plow. The required equations were formulated using the obtained weights from a trained artificial neural network model that trained using actual data field experiments. The application predicts actual field capacity (ha/h) and fuel consumption per unit area (lit/ha). Tractor loading factor was the main issue in the present application since it was used as a regulator for determination of the required draft. The application displays a chart during simulation to show the intersect point between both specific fuel consumption calculated by the application and specific fuel consumption calculated using the equation of ASABE standard. Overall energy efficiency in the range of 10–20% was acted to select the optimum values of the affecting parameters. The application outputs include theoretical field capacity, actual field capacity, field efficiency, fuel consumption per unit area, fuel consumption, energy required based on fuel consumption, draft, unit draft per unit plow width, unit draft per unit plowing area, draft power (drawbar power), energy required based on draft requirements, loafing factor, calculated specific fuel consumption, specific fuel consumption based on ASABE equation and overall energy efficiency. For validation the developed C-Sharp application, data from previous study was utilized for chisel plow- tractor system operated in specific condition, and the simulated draft was 16.73 kN (calculated specific fuel consumption and specific fuel consumption based on ASABE equation was 0.53 lit/kWh) and the loading factor was 0.62. The relative error between actual and simulated drat was 16%. The developed application is appropriate for farm machinery management, educational and research purposes. It is user-friendly and could be run on Windows desktop without C-Sharp environment. The application could be edited and/or updated to predict performance indicators of other tractor-tillage implement systems.

Emotional Computer

Extensive studies established the existence of a close interaction between emotion and cognition with remarkable influence of the emotion on all sorts of cognitive process. Consequently, technologies that emulate human intelligent behavior cannot be thought completely intelligent without incorporating interference of emotional component in the rational reasoning processes. Recently, several researchers have been started working in the field of emotion modeling to cater the need of interactive computer applications that demand human-like interaction with the computer. However, due to the absence of structured guidelines, the most challenging task for the researcher is to understand and select the most appropriate definitions, theories and processes governing the human psychology to design the intended model. The objective of the present article is to review the background scenario and necessary studies for designing emotion model for a computer machine so that it could generate appropriate synthetic emotions while interacting with the external environmental factors.

Microsatellite analysis to rationalize grape germplasm in India and development of a molecular database

Three hundred and seventeen grape accessions from the National Active Grape Germplasm Site in India were analysed with 25 microsatellite markers. A total of 411 alleles were detected, of which 42% were rare alleles. Unique alleles for 56 genotypes were also identified. The analysis of microsatellite data identified 63 duplicate accessions and only 254 accessions were unique genotypes. Several cases of misnomers, synonymy and homonymy were identified. Parental genotype for a few clonal selections was ascertained. Population structure analysis grouped 254 unique genotypes into four major clusters. The analysis also revealed the presence of admixtures with only 79% of pure ancestry. A core collection comprising 80 genotypes was identified, which represented all the alleles and genetic diversity. A user-friendly and interactive computer application software was developed for storage and the retrieval of molecular data. A molecular database for the 254 genotypes was created. This analysis will help in the rationalization and better management of germplasm. Information on genetic diversity and population structure will form the basis for varietal improvement programmes.

Role of Technology in Enhancing the Quality of Higher Business Management Education – A Description

Today technology is having its impact on every direction mankind takes and higher management education cannot be an exception. In fact technology is confirming that it precipitates change in management education by providing and accessing information, learning approaches and methods of teaching and learning. Technology helps by providing learning resources, individualized learning, making the task of teaching-learning interesting, decisive and fruitful. Thus, students learn more and without any burden with the help of technology. It is only with the help of technology that distance higher management education has come to stand on its feet. Higher management education is provided by traditional universities in their campuses and in the colleges affiliated with these universities, institutions for profit and by independent institutions. Some well known business management institutions, as well some universities, also run executive development programmers, training programmers et cetera where the students are working executives. The maximum number of business management graduates and post graduates come from colleges affiliated to universities. Students, coming from different institutions, entering the market, are paid differently by recruiters. This paper makes an attempt to review the role of technology in enhancing the quality of higher management education. In early days of the use of technology in higher business management education was limited to automating but now-a-days technology is being used to transform the management education. For example, use of information technology in higher business management education improves communication, efficiency and decision making. Interactive computer applications and simulation exercises are used for ‘visiting’ and ‘meeting’ the key players before entering the class. Instructor’s console, computer assisted instructions facilitate information and knowledge sharing. To transit knowledge is the ultimate goal of teaching.

A biotracing model of Salmonella in the pork production chain.

In biotracing systems, downstream chain information and model-based approaches are used to trace the sources of microbial contamination in a food chain. This article includes the results of a biotracing model for Salmonella in the pork slaughter process chain. A Bayesian belief network model was used in which information on the Salmonella level at different locations in the slaughterhouse were used in combination with prior knowledge about the dynamics of Salmonella throughout the slaughter line. Data collected in a Dutch slaughterhouse were used to specify prior beliefs about the model inputs and to iteratively refine the distributions of the parameters in the model to obtain an optimal description of that specific slaughterhouse. The primary purpose of the model is to trace the sources of contamination for individual Salmonella-positive carcasses at the end of the slaughter line. The model results indicated that house flora on or in the carcass splitter was the source of contamination for many carcasses, especially for those that carried contamination on the cutting side. The results also indicated that the parameter values of the model may be subject to temporal variation and can be used as a tool to provide estimates of such trends. This model illustrates the concept of biotracing, gives insight into the dynamics of Salmonella in the slaughter line, and indicates the sites in the line where data collection is most effective for biotracing. This biotracing model was implemented as an interactive computer application, which is a step in the process toward an operational biotracing system by which a stakeholder can initiate immediate responses to Salmonella contamination and other hazards in the pork slaughterhouse.

Interactive software tool to comprehend the calculation of optimal sequence alignments with dynamic programming

Summary: Dynamic programming (DP) is a general optimization strategy that is successfully used across various disciplines of science. In bioinformatics, it is widely applied in calculating the optimal alignment between pairs of protein or DNA sequences. These alignments form the basis of new, verifiable biological hypothesis. Despite its importance, there are no interactive tools available for training and education on understanding the DP algorithm. Here, we introduce an interactive computer application with a graphical interface, for the purpose of educating students about DP. The program displays the DP scoring matrix and the resulting optimal alignment(s), while allowing the user to modify key parameters such as the values in the similarity matrix, the sequence alignment algorithm version and the gap opening/extension penalties.We hope that this software will be useful to teachers and students of bioinformatics courses, as well as researchers who implement the DP algorithm for diverse applications.Availability and Implementation: The software is freely available at: http:/melolab.org/sat. The software is written in the Java computer language, thus it runs on all major platforms and operating systems including Windows, Mac OS X and LINUX.Contact: All inquiries or comments about this software should be directed to Francisco Melo at fmelo@bio.puc.cl

Determining the Psychological Involvement in Multimedia Interactions

Human computer interaction (HCI) is currently aimed at the design of interactive computer applications for human use while preventing user frustration. When considering the nature of modern computer applications, such as e-learning systems and computer games, it appears that human involvement cannot be improved only by using traditional approaches, such as nice user interfaces. For a pleasant human involvement, these computer applications require that the computers should have the ability to naturally adapt to their users and this requires the computers to have the ability to recognize user emotions. For recognizing emotions currently most preferred research approach is aimed at facial expression based emotion recognition, which seems to have many limitations. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a method to determine the psychological involvement of a human during a multimedia interaction session using the eye movement activity and arousal evaluation. In our approach we use a low cost hardware/software combination, which determines eye movement activity based on electrooculogram (EOG) signals and the level of arousal using galvanic skin response (GSR) signals. The results obtained using six individuals show that the nature of involvement can be recognized using these affect signals as optimal levels and distracted conditions. Index Terms: Arousal, Attention, Cognition, Emotion, EOG, Eye Movement Activity, GSR, HCI, Human Involvement, Multimedia Interactions. DOI: 10.4038/icter.v2i1.1400 The International Journal on Advances in ICT for Emerging Regions 2009 02 (01): 11-20

Automatic event-level textual emotion sensing using mutual action histogram between entities

Automatic emotion sensing in textual data is crucial for the development of intelligent interfaces in many interactive computer applications. This paper describes a high-precision, knowledgebase-independent approach for automatic emotion sensing for the subjects of events embedded within sentences. The proposed approach is based on the probability distribution of common mutual actions between the subject and the object of an event. We have incorporated web-based text mining and semantic role labeling techniques, together with a number of reference entity pairs and hand-crafted emotion generation rules to realize an event emotion detection system. The evaluation outcome reveals a satisfactory result with about 85% accuracy for detecting the positive, negative and neutral emotions.

Transparent adaptation of single-user applications for multi-user real-time collaboration

Single-user interactive computer applications are pervasive in our daily lives and work. Leveraging single-user applications for supporting multi-user collaboration has the potential to significantly increase the availability and improve the usability of collaborative applications. In this article, we report an innovative Transparent Adaptation (TA) approach and associated supporting techniques that can be used to convert existing and new single-user applications into collaborative ones, without changing the source code of the original application. The cornerstone of the TA approach is the operational transformation (OT) technique and the method of adapting the single-user application programming interface to the data and operation models of OT. This approach and supporting techniques were developed and tested in the process of transparently converting two commercial off-the-shelf single-user applications (Microsoft Word and PowerPoint) into real-time collaborative applications, called CoWord and CoPowerPoint, respectively. CoWord and CoPowerPoint not only retain the functionalities and “look-and-feel” of their single-user counterparts, but also provide advanced multi-user collaboration capabilities for supporting multiple interaction paradigms, ranging from concurrent and free interaction to sequential and synchronized interaction, and for supporting detailed workspace awareness, including multi-user telepointers and radar views. The TA approach and generic collaboration engine software component developed from this work are potentially applicable and reusable in adapting a wide range of single-user applications.

From the editors: collaborative computing community - leveraging single-user applications for multiuser distributed collaboration

Single-user interactive computer applications are pervasive in our work and daily lives. Commonly used single-user interactive applications include text editors such as Notepad and Emacs, word processors such as Office Word and OpenOffice Writer, spreadsheet tools such as Office Excel and OpenOffice Calculator, slide authoring and presentation tools such as Office PowerPoint and OpenOffice Impress, Web authoring tools such as FrontPage and Dreamweaver, CAD systems such as AutoCAD and Catia, and media creation tools such as Maya and 3D Studio Max. The choices for real-time collaborative applications, however, are limited. Most advanced real-time collaborative applications are research prototypes with limited functionalities and usability. The vast majority of existing commercial applications were designed for single users, and future applications' design is expected to continue to be single-user-centric.

Real-time detection of emotional changes for inhabited environments

The utilisation of emotional information in computer systems that interact with humans has become more prevalent during the last few years. The various channels through which emotions are expressed provide valuable information about the way humans think and behave and have been successfully employed to assist the inference mechanism of interactive computer applications. In this paper, a novel approach to detect changes in the emotional status of a subject is presented. It is argued that the proposed methodology will be able to detect emotional changes in real time utilising physiological measures and a combination of Artificial Neural Networks and statistical mechanisms. Clustering analysis is used to show that the myogram signal was the most suitable attribute to distinguish between two emotional states. Results show that the suggested mechanism is able to accurately distinguish changes from neutral to non-neutral emotional states. Emotional information could be employed to improve user interaction in inhabited environments.

Electrophysiologically interactive computer systems

Combining computing with physiological sensing technologies will transform human-machine interaction and usher in a wide range of new applications. electrophysiologically interactive computer systems (EpICS) combine physiological sensing technologies with interactive computer applications. These systems support a diverse range of monitoring and training disciplines. EpICS provide interesting usability metrics and form the backbone of brain-computer interfaces, prosthetics, and other hands-free control technologies. We have identified two basic EpIC systems. Monitoring EpICS quantify or measure an electrophysiological signal of interest against some scale. Training EpICS feed back physiological information to a subject in real time to enable operant conditioning or instrumental learning of control to occur - a process commonly known as biofeedback.

Implementation of a property standard index

The property standard index model was implemented as an interactive computer application to provide a decision support tool for the Queensland Department of Housing. The model was developed to assist housing managers evaluate the condition data collected on approximately 55,000 dwellings they manage. The collaborative nature of the project allowed design of the user interface to be consistent with other property information applications concurrently under development for Queensland Department of Housing and resulted in a prototype for a practical and use able decision support tool. This paper outlines the implementation of the model, the user interactions required and the final form of the prototype software.

Laboratory instruction in histology at the University at Buffalo: recent replacement of microscope exercises with computer applications.

Histology is a morphologic science in which the structure of the cells, tissues, and organs of the body are examined with a microscope. In the laboratory courses in histology at the School of Medicine of the University at Buffalo, histologic specimens had been used since the late 19th century to teach the principles of cell, tissue, and organ structure. Students also had to learn how to analyze or "read" slides with a microscope. Learning histology in this way, i.e., by direct examination of actual specimens, is time consuming and viewed by some as unnecessary. As a result of recent curricular reform at the School of Medicine that reduced contact time in histology, half of all laboratory exercises that would have been performed with a microscope were performed instead with interactive computer applications. By replacing some microscope exercises with more efficient computer applications, the histology course accommodated curricular change by both reducing contact time and continuing to offer valuable microscope laboratories for most of the organ systems of the body. To provide a basis for comparing traditional microscope exercises with computer-assisted instruction in histology, the nature of the laboratory experience between 1846 and 1998 is briefly reviewed. The instructional strategy behind the use of computers is presented, along with the nature of the computer applications and the means by which the computer applications were incorporated into the school's laboratory course in histology.

USING COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE IN FUZZY ENGINEERING DESIGN

Problems in the field of engineering design represent an important class of real world problems that typically require a fuzzy and imprecise representation, since relations and interactions between different aspects of a design are often too complicated to allow a precise one. This article presents and discusses a new approach to model these types of problems, by incorporating linguistic descriptions together with a variety of user-defined trade-off strategies. An interactive computer application is introduced, using computational intelligence to solve the design task by producing a specially desired output under the given environmental conditions, which are partly caused by the personal preferences of the engineer and by the expectations of the customer. It utilizes a randomized evolutionary technique, made suitable for the class of problems at hand, to generate and optimize design solutions that are later identified by a clustering algorithm. Moreover, test problems that were solved by the application are considered. In all cases the good solutions were obtained by evaluating only an extremely small fraction of all possible designs.