Remote Experiments Research Articles

Implementation of the wp@e-lab fex mooc in tenth grade students at the Liceo Integrado Fray Francisco Chacón in Sopó, Cundinamarca

At present, virtual and distance learning spaces have been developed in the search for different alternatives in the construction of experimental environments, among which e-Learning spaces and massive open and online MOOC courses stand out. The COVID-19 health emergency reflected the need to implement academic interaction activities at a distance; therefore, the educational institutions opted for the virtual and distance modality for the development of the curricula and programmatic content addressed in each of the areas of knowledge. Simulation-based virtual laboratories are one of the resilient alternatives. On the other hand, school institutions in Colombia do not have the necessary infrastructure or the financial and technology capacity for the creation of scientific laboratories. The international project World Pendulum Alliance proposes the creation of virtual learning environments, reinforcing the experimental field through the implementation of remote laboratories. For this purpose, an alliance is created between different universities in Europe and Latin America, with the aim of disseminating remote experimentation in Basic Sciences. Among the consortium of partner universities, the Universidad Nacional Abierta y a Distancia - UNAD is linked to the project and, among its dissemination activities, has created the ReEx-SDC Science Dissemination Center, led by researchers from the School of Basic Sciences, Technology and Engineering ECBTI. This article shows the results obtained from the MOOC course of the IST of the University of Lisbon at the Fray Francisco Chacón School in tenth grade students, with the objective of including remote experimentation in the tenth grade physics curriculum in the following school year.

The 23rd National School on Neutron & X-Ray Scattering 2021—Virtual School with Remote Experiments

The National School on Neutron and X-ray Scattering (NXS) has been a yearly “institution” for North American graduate students interested in neutron and X-ray scattering since its inception 23 years ago. For the second year in a row, it was forced to go virtual. Nevertheless, the aim was to include user experiments and maximize interactions in this second virtual iteration rather than simply repeat the lecture series of the first virtual iteration. Here, we share our newly adopted methods and experiences.

Laborem Box: a scalable and open source platform to design remote lab experiments in electronics

Laborem Box: a scalable and open source platform to design remote lab experiments in electronics

R&D Activities for Fusion DEMO in the QST Rokkasho Fusion Institute

The current status and the progress of research and development (R&D) activities for a Fusion DEMO reactor in the National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology (QST) Rokkasho Fusion Institute is reported. In order to advance the Japanese DEMO activity, not only Japanese domestic activity but also international collaborations of Broader Approach activity and ITER-related activities are conducted in the QST Rokkasho Fusion Institute. Activities for DEMO design and relevant R&D; design of a fusion neutron source and development of an accelerator, ITER Test Blanket System; tritium handling technology; and information technology infrastructures, including a supercomputer system and a remote experimentation system, are carried out for a Fusion DEMO reactor.

Bioethics as an Anthropological Challenge

The subject of the proposed paper is the disclosure of prerequisites and determinants of the implementation of the soteriological concept of studying the interdisciplinary course of bioethics, the structural model and synectic algorithm of its comprehension and epistemological map of formation of soteriological competence of the future specialist during the study of bioethics. The methodological basis for the implementation of the proposed project is the theory of research-oriented professional education (Inquiry Based Science Education) and, thereafter, technology of advanced learning (Technology Enhanced Learning), which provide wide opportunities to study the course of bioethics in the form of observation of remote virtual experiments on the portal Go-Lab; GRAASP environment for the implementation of author's developments and pedagogically structured programs in the process of performative interaction between teacher and students. The scientific novelty of the material is to substantiate the content of anthropological competencies of future specialists in biomedical specialties and the strategies of obtaining them on the basis of the principles of hermeneutic didactics. Conclusions. Today, obviously, the task of bioethics is not only to protect nature and human life, but also to participate in the realization of the high mission of Salvation. This defines the research field of bioethics as a space of secret dialogue, in which it is desirable to find a place not only for the voice of clinicians, pharmacists, engineers, philosophers, public figures, but also the pastoral voice of the Church.

Temperature Measurement—Inquiry-Based Learning Activities for Third Graders

The article presents our Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) activities in the project-based Science education of third graders (8–9-year-old pupils) in the Slovak Republic. Individual tasks of project assignment titled “Temperature Measurement” were conceived for “guided inquiry”. We also supported the IBL of pupils by interactive education strategy–Integrated e-Learning (INTe-L). The strategy was built on the role of interactive simulations and experimenting at the knowledge acquisition. The following INTe-L components were used: (a) on-site and remote experiments, (b) interactive simulations and (c) electronic study materials. The research was based the hypothesis that the project-based teaching of the topic “Temperature Measurement” using the IBL activities is significantly more efficient than traditional (instructivist) way of teaching. To verify the hypothesis, we carried out a pedagogical experiment on a sample of 60 respondents. The third graders were divided into two parallel groups: an experimental group (EG, 30 pupils) and control group (CG, 30 pupils). To get a relevant feedback, pre-test and post-test were developed and applied. The results attained in the EG were statistically processed, evaluated, and subsequently compared with those in the CG. The analysis of the results attained by the EG showed that their knowledge acquisition has been increased by 24% compared to CG. We have created a methodology for making simple scientific project assignments with the implementation of all components of the new integrated e-learning education strategy (real and real remote experiment, e-simulation, e-learning material). On a specific example of the topic “Temperature Measurement” in primary education, we have presented the possibility of using a “guided inquiry” in the implementation of individual experimental tasks. We have introduced a form of teamwork that allows to harmonize the teaching requirements with individual learning approach and helps to prepare pupils for planned work and independent knowledge acquisition and problem solving. The study has shown that complex IBL activities can be successfully applied at primary school 3rd grade level already. Our form of education with the wider use of modern information and communication technologies (ICT) was attractive for the learners and helped them to develop interdisciplinary relationships. The integrated e-learning has helped third grades to develop a deeper conceptual understanding of temperature and allowed them to prepare presentations to demonstrate their conceptual knowledge. The approach allowed pupils to gain key competencies in Science (discussion and presentation of results). It has also increased the pupils’ interest in Science in general and helped them to understand links between different subjects.

Online Blended Learning in Small Private Online Course

In this work, we studied the online blended learning model of computer network experimentation, focusing mainly on the problem of traditional network experiments being limited by location and time, and explore the applicability of the small private online course (SPOC) advanced teaching concepts to computer network online experiment teaching. Based on the structure of a combination of virtual and real, real and not virtual, an online network experiment platform and management system has been designed and constructed, enabling students to carry out remote online computer network hardware experiments anytime and anywhere, without being restricted by time, space, or content. Using the online network experiment platform, we can organize the experimental modules and knowledge points via the SPOC course concept, by developing online network experimental content, modularizing and fragmenting of the experiments, creating the pre-experimental explanation and experiment preview videos, and evaluating the assignments via peer grading to analyze students’ learning behavior. By exploring online network experimental teaching methods and management models, offering experimental guidance in an interactive manner, and highlighting the openness and sharing characteristics of online experimental teaching platforms, we can improve the utilization rate for teaching resources, and provide ideas for applied scientific research methods.

Design and implementation of virtual experiment for complex control system: A case study of thermal control process

Online experimental systems that include remote and virtual experiments based on the Internet has become a new form of experiment in engineering education. This paper proposes a virtual experiment for the complex process control system. It is based on the networked control system laboratory (NCSLab), which provides a reliable framework for virtual thermal experiment. Taking the combustion system of 1000 MW ultra-supercritical coal-fired once-through boiler-turbine units as an example, the framework and the implementation process of the online system are given in this paper. A new presentation form for complex processes control experiment is provided, which could be a solution for simulating physical experimental equipment in virtual environments. The potential danger in practical experiments could be avoided. Additionally, the real-time operation for complex control systems could be presented in a 3D scene. Meanwhile, the flexibility and efficiency could be increased in engineering experimental education. Moreover, using the experiment evaluation method, the references and feedback for teaching and assessment are provided in this paper.

Impact of remote experimentation, interactivity and platform effectiveness on laboratory learning outcomes

Access and personalized instruction required for laboratory education can be highly compromised due to regulatory constraints in times such as COVID-19 pandemic or resource shortages at other times. This directly impacts the student engagement and immersion that are necessary for conceptual and procedural understanding for scientific experimentation. While online and remote laboratories have potential to address the aforementioned challenges, theoretical perspectives of laboratory learning outcomes are critical to enhance their impact and are sparsely examined in the literature. Using Transactional Distance Theory (TDT), this paper addresses the gap through a case study on Universal Testing Machine (UTM). By comparing physical (PL-UTM) and remotely triggerable (RT-UTM) laboratory platforms, the structure and interactions as per TDT are analysed. Characterization of interactivity between remote learners and instructors disclose indicative parameters that affect transactional distances and aid in conceptual understanding in remote laboratory learning environment. An extensive pedagogical study through development of two instruments towards assessing conceptual understanding and perception of platform effectiveness that was conducted both on physical laboratory and RT-UTM showed: (1) remote users conducted experiments 3 times more frequently (2) completed assignments in 30% less time and (3) had over 200% improvement in scores when RT-UTM platform was integrated into mainstream learning.

Design and remote collaboration control of asymmetric rigid-flexible hybrid-driven lower limb rehabilitation robot

A double-end lower limb rehabilitation robot is introduced in the paper, which can realize the rehabilitation training of the abduction and abduction, internal rotation and external rotation of human lower limb. The kinematics and dynamics of the robot are analyzed. Based on the motion trajectory planning of the lower limb rehabilitation robot, the motion state and dynamic state of the cable are analyzed. In order to realize the good remote cooperative control between the rehabilitation physician terminal and the patient rehabilitation terminal, the bilateral PD control method and the patient terminal force feedback control method based on the absolute stability theory are analyzed by using the dual-port network model. The simulation results show that the performance of the patient terminal force feedback control method is excellent when the force on the moving platform and the external interference force are changed suddenly. The mapping model of double-ended mechanism is established in the SimMechanics. The simulation results show that the mapping model of double-ended mechanism has a good position tracking ability and their workspaces can meet the requirements of trajectory mapping. The remote collaborative rehabilitation training experiment was done on the established experimental platform. The experimental result shows that the experiment system has a good tracking performance under the guidance of the patient terminal force feedback control method. The feasibility and operability of the remote rehabilitation cooperation technology are verified.

Remote Surgery Using a Neuroendovascular Intervention Support Robot Equipped with a Sensing Function: Experimental Verification.

Purpose:Expectations for remote surgery in endovascular treatments are increasing. We conducted the world's first remote catheter surgery experiment using an endovascular treatment-supported robot. We considered the results, examined the issues, and suggested countermeasures for practical use.Methods:The slave robot in the angiography room is an original machine that enables sensing feedback by using an originally developed insertion force-measuring device, which detects the pressure stress on the vessel wall and alerts the operator using an audible scale. The master side was set in a separate room. They were connected via HTTP communication using local area network system. The surgeon operated by looking at a personal computer monitor that shared an angiography monitor. The slave robot catheterized and inserted a coil for an aneurysm in the silicon blood vessel model in the angiography room.Results:Our robot responded to the surgeon's operations promptly and to the joystick's swift movements quite accurately. The surgeon could control the stress to the model vessels using various actions, because the operator could hear the sound from the insertion force. However, the robot required a time gradient to reach a stable advanced speed at the time of the initial movement, and experienced a slight time lag.Conclusion:Our remote operation appeared to be sufficiently feasible to perform the surgery safely. This system seems extremely promising for preventing viral infection and radiation exposure to medical staff. It will also enable medical professionals to operate in remote areas and create a ubiquitous medical environment.

APPLICATION OF MACHINE LEARNING FOR REMOTE ELECTRONICS EXPERIMENTS AS THE MEAN OF INDENTIFICATION

We are increasingly faced with automated solutions that create a dynamic and constantly evolving scientific and technical environment, with new challenges in finding more accurate and efficient solutions for identification. This article introduces a machine learning application that allows you to automatically recognize and identify learners in a distance learning experiment without being explicitly programmed. Experimental methods and components have been transferred to a distance learning laboratory environment. A conceptual model of an electronics laboratory has been developed for remote experiments using identification methods. This article focuses on machine learning using the LabVIEW package, which can access data and use it for self-study. The article presents the application of machine learning software LabVIEW National Instruments and NI ELVIS hardware simulators for electronic laboratory remote experiments and perspectives in the educational process.

Understanding and improving the quality and reproducibility of Jupyter notebooks.

Jupyter Notebooks have been widely adopted by many different communities, both in science and industry. They support the creation of literate programming documents that combine code, text, and execution results with visualizations and other rich media. The self-documenting aspects and the ability to reproduce results have been touted as significant benefits of notebooks. At the same time, there has been growing criticism that the way in which notebooks are being used leads to unexpected behavior, encourages poor coding practices, and makes it hard to reproduce its results. To better understand good and bad practices used in the development of real notebooks, in prior work we studied 1.4 million notebooks from GitHub. We presented a detailed analysis of their characteristics that impact reproducibility, proposed best practices that can improve the reproducibility, and discussed open challenges that require further research and development. In this paper, we extended the analysis in four different ways to validate the hypothesis uncovered in our original study. First, we separated a group of popular notebooks to check whether notebooks that get more attention have more quality and reproducibility capabilities. Second, we sampled notebooks from the full dataset for an in-depth qualitative analysis of what constitutes the dataset and which features they have. Third, we conducted a more detailed analysis by isolating library dependencies and testing different execution orders. We report how these factors impact the reproducibility rates. Finally, we mined association rules from the notebooks. We discuss patterns we discovered, which provide additional insights into notebook reproducibility. Based on our findings and best practices we proposed, we designed Julynter, a Jupyter Lab extension that identifies potential issues in notebooks and suggests modifications that improve their reproducibility. We evaluate Julynter with a remote user experiment with the goal of assessing Julynter recommendations and usability.

The global digital divide: Younger and older teachers at odds in this COVID19-induced remote teaching experiment.

Abstract COVID-19 was anticipated to target aging population and surely it did in world of health, but did collateral damage in education. Lack of preparedness and digital divide became more obvious among old-aged teachers as compared to younger faculty. The later found themselves more equipped with skill sets and more motivated to embrace the realities of the virtual world. We studied a cohort of teachers across the spectrum of age or years of service compared to younger or newly hired faculty. We solicited teachers in both cohorts from Asia, Europe and Americas and surveyed their responses to a given set of questions. We also recruited a group of students to independently and anonymously verify if they noticed any major effect in their learning process. Our global data showed a clear digital divide among the aged and younger faculty. Both groups found themselves unprepared and lacking necessary skill set to deal with this unprecedented, sudden and mandatory online education being forced upon them. However, younger faculty reported to have adapted to the onslaught of technology in an abrupt and timely manner as compared to their senior colleagues. Mostly, both group of teachers considered the learning experience at best as “on job training module”. High anxiety levels with fear of lack of performance, proper delivery methods also played a role in this panic-stricken educational world. Both group of teachers also reported lack of historical perspective and pilot studies for the use of technological gadgets as one of the artifacts in this experiment. The students being at the recipient end also reported in their surveys that the haste and rush of delivery and assessment methods negatively influenced the teaching methods and reciprocally their learning process.

Conducting speech perception experiments remotely: Some tools, successes, and challenges

The use of remote (i.e., web-based) data collection for psycholinguistics research has proliferated in recent years, reflecting the emergence of new tools for promoting high-quality data collection beyond the traditional laboratory environment. This is particularly true this past year, demonstrating one way that the pandemic has transformed research in the short-term. In the long-term, remote approaches will remain a powerful tool in the domain of psycholinguistics, in part because they help (1) promote diversity among participant samples and (2) increase feasibility of the new best practices for promoting reproducibility of research (e.g., larger sample sizes, in-house replications, assessing generalization to novel stimulus sets). However, embracing remote data collection is not without its challenges, especially for speech perception researchers who require some degree of control over the listening environment and participants’ linguistic background. In this talk, I will describe tools, successes, and challenges related to our experiences in conducting remote speech perception experiments for a variety of phenomena (e.g., categorical perception, perceptual learning, talker adaptation, Ganong effect), tasks (e.g., phonetic identification, lexical decision, talker discrimination, transcription), and dependent measures (e.g., reaction time, accuracy, sensitivity, psychometric response functions).

Estimating the performance gap between lab and remote speech perception experiment

The presentation will report on an online replication of several lab-based studies in the perception of masked, distorted and enhanced speech in which listener-related differences were controlled.

Applying Cross-Modality Data Processing for Infarction Learning in Medical Internet of Things

Cross-modality data processing is critical for the Internet-of-Things (IoT) deployment in healthcare. It can convert the innumerable raw day-to-day medical big data from massive IoT-based medical devices to diagnostic valuable data so that they can be feed to clinical routine. In this article, we propose a novel spatiotemporal two-streams generative adversarial network (SpGAN) as a cross-modality data processing approach to deploy the medical IoT in infarction learning. Our SpGAN remotely converts diagnostic valuable contrast-enhanced images (the “gold standard” for infarction learning, but it requires the injection of contrast agents) directly from raw nonenhanced cine MR images. This converting allows physicians to remotely perform infarction observation and analysis to break through the limitations of time and space by building a cloud computing platform of IoT-based MRI devices. Importantly, this converting offers a low-risk IoT-based manner to eliminate the potential fatal risk caused by contrast agent injection in the current infarction learning workflow. Specifically, SpGAN consists of: 1) a spatiotemporal two-stream framework as an encoding–decoding model to achieve data converting and 2) a spatiotemporal pyramid network enhances those features that are responsible to the infarction learning during encoding to improve decoding performance. Real IoT-based remote diagnosis experiments performed on 230 patients demonstrate that SpGAN provides high-quality converted images for infarction learning and promotes the in-depth application and deployment of IoT in the medical field.

The Development of Electronics Telecommunication Remote Laboratory Architecture Based on Mobile Devices

This paper will discuss the results of research on the development of remote laboratory architectures for electronics telecommunications courses based on mobile devices. The background of study for the development of this system is to meet the demands of the world of education in the era of the industrial revolution 4.0 and the needs for online learning that is caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Besides, with the development of cellular communication technology and mobile devices that have PC-level capabilities, mobile devices can support remote laboratory development. The design of remote laboratory system is based on an embedded system consisting of a user management server based on the Raspberry Pi 4 and an instrumentation system using Red Pitaya. Remote Laboratory applications can be accessed using mobile devices such as Android based smart phones or tablets. The aim of the development of this remote laboratory is to complete remote experiment activities in electronics telecommunications courses in the Electrical Engineering study program.

Integrating real-time data analysis into automatic tracking of social insects.

Automatic video tracking has become a standard tool for investigating the social behaviour of insects. The recent integration of computer vision in tracking technologies will probably lead to fully automated behavioural pattern classification within the next few years. However, many current systems rely on offline data analysis and use computationally expensive techniques to track pre-recorded videos. To address this gap, we developed BACH (Behaviour Analysis maCHine), a software that performs video tracking of insect groups in real time. BACH uses object recognition via convolutional neural networks and identifies individually tagged insects via an existing matrix code recognition algorithm. We compared the tracking performances of BACH and a human observer (HO) across a series of short videos of ants moving in a two-dimensional arena. We found that BACH detected ant shapes only slightly worse than the HO. However, its matrix code-mediated identification of individual ants only attained human-comparable levels when ants moved relatively slowly, and fell when ants walked relatively fast. This happened because BACH had a relatively low efficiency in detecting matrix codes in blurry images of ants walking at high speeds. BACH needs to undergo hardware and software adjustments to overcome its present limits. Nevertheless, our study emphasizes the possibility of, and the need for, further integrating real-time data analysis into the study of animal behaviour. This will accelerate data generation, visualization and sharing, opening possibilities for conducting fully remote collaborative experiments.

A Contactless Measurement Instrument Based on Fusion of A Single-Point Laser Range Finder and A VIO System

To improve the safety and convenience of the traditional measurement instruments (such as Total station, Laser tracker), while reducing the system cost, a contactless measurement instrument consists of a single-point laser range finder (LRF) and a tracking module (a VIO system providing the measurement system 6DoF poses) is proposed in this paper. Its measuring procedure includes three steps: 1) Obtain the calibrated relative position parameters from a 3D position of the LRF. 2) Determine the remote target 3D point positions by fusing the measurement value of LRF. 3) In order to improve measurement accuracy, design a practical case-specific framework by analysing two typical measurement situations. This allows us to measure all scale factor information such as distance, height and clearance of a spatial structure in a convenient or portable way. Through the remote 3D point positions estimation experiment, the contactless measurement instrument exhibits the capability to satisfy the need of majority measurement applications for indoor architecture.