Single Player Research Articles

R3SOLVE: A Serious Game to Support End-of-Life Rooftop Solar Panel Waste Management

A complex systems model is necessary to holistically address the end-of-life (EoL) solar panel waste problem. However, there is a significant challenge in communicating such a model to stakeholders. Serious games can overcome this challenge by simplifying a complex model via a user-friendly interface. It enables stakeholders to experiment with different decisions and understand their long-term impacts in a safe environment. In this paper, a serious game called R3SOLVE was designed from a previously developed system dynamics (SD) model. The goal of the game is to achieve certain collection and recovery outcomes through a mix of decisions ranging from product stewardship strategies, landfill regulation, technological investment, promotional effort, reuse strategy, and infrastructure improvement. The game has a single player mode, where a player can access all decisions, and a multiplayer (turn-based) mode, where two players with different roles work collaboratively to achieve the desired outcome. Rewards and penalties also exist in the game to promote players’ extrinsic motivation to use critical thinking. Both game modes have been tested in separate workshops to identify bugs and issues regarding goal clarity and in-game information. Future directions to conduct stakeholder workshops and the evaluation approach are also suggested at the end of this paper.

Sleeping Contextual/Non-Contextual Thompson Sampling MAB for mmWave D2D Two-Hop Relay Probing

Millimeter wave (mmWave) band, i.e., 30 to 300 GHz, is characterized by short range transmissions and vulnerability to path blockage necessitating the use of relaying. Probing more relays finds out the best relay having the highest spectral efficiency but at the expense of increasing the probing overhead due to excessive beamforming training (BT) causing a decrease in the overall throughput. In this paper, mmWave two-hop relaying will be formulated as a single player multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem enabling one relay probing while maximizing the achievable spectral efficiency. Moreover, the relays could not establish the mmWave link due to blockage for instance will be identified as sleeping relays and eliminated from the rest of the MAB game. Thus, sleeping non contextual MAB (S-MAB) algorithm, namely sleeping Thompson sampling (S-TS) will be proposed to handle the problem. Furthermore, by utilizing the multiband capability of standardized WiGig devices containing both 2.4/5 GHz WiFi and 60 GHz mmWave bands, WiFi information will be used as contexts of the MAB game. Therefore, sleeping contextual MAB (S-CMAB) algorithm, namely S-CTS, will be proposed as well. Numerical and regret analysis ensure the superior performance of the S-CMAB algorithm over the S-MAB counterpart and the existing mmWave relay probing solutions accompanied with high convergence rates.

Inertial sensors-determined match characteristics that serve as predictors of elite, male badminton players’ performance levels

The study's purpose was to establish the inertial sensors-containing device (ISCD)-determined match characteristics that predict elite, male badminton players’ performance levels. Twenty-two (22) male single players (aged: 23.39 ± 3.92 years), who represented 10 African countries, participated in the study. Players were categorized as successful and less-successful players according to the results of five championships during two seasons. ISCD units (Catapult MinimaxV4), Polar Heart Rate Transmitter Belts, and digital video cameras were used to collect match data. ISCD-determined variables were corrected for match duration, and independent t-tests, cluster analysis, and a binary forward stepwise logistic regression were used for statistical analyses. A Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (ROCC) indicated the validity of the group classification model. High-intensity accelerations per second were identified as the only ISCD-determined variable that showed a significant difference (p = 0.05) between groups. Furthermore, only high-intensity accelerations per second (p = 0.03) and low-intensity efforts per second (p = 0.04) were identified as significant predictors of group classification, with 76.88% of players that could be classified back into their original groups by making use of the ISCD-based logistic regression formula. The ROCC showed a value of 0.87. The identification of the last-mentioned ISCD-determined variables for the attainment of badminton performances emphasizes the importance of using badminton drills and conditioning techniques to improve not only the physical fitness levels of players but also their ability to accelerate at high intensities.

Continuous-Variable Quantum Secret Sharing Based on Thermal Terahertz Sources in Inter-Satellite Wireless Links.

We propose a continuous-variable quantum secret sharing (CVQSS) scheme based on thermal terahertz (THz) sources in inter-satellite wireless links (THz-CVQSS). In this scheme, firstly, each player locally preforms Gaussian modulation to prepare a thermal THz state, and then couples it into a circulating spatiotemporal mode using a highly asymmetric beam splitter. At the end, the dealer measures the quadrature components of the received spatiotemporal mode through performing the heterodyne detection to share secure keys with all the players of a group. This design enables that the key can be recovered only by the whole group players’ knowledge in cooperation and neither a single player nor any subset of the players in the group can recover the key correctly. We analyze both the security and the performance of THz-CVQSS in inter-satellite links. Results show that a long-distance inter-satellite THz-CVQSS scheme with multiple players is feasible. This work will provide an effective way for building an inter-satellite quantum communication network.

Nonzero-Sum Stochastic Games and Mean-Field Games with Impulse Controls

We consider a general class of nonzero-sum N-player stochastic games with impulse controls, where players control the underlying dynamics with discrete interventions. We adopt a veri?cation approach and provide su?cient conditions for the Nash equilibria (NEs) of the game. We then consider the limiting situation when N goes to in?nity, that is, a suitable mean-?eld game (MFG) with impulse controls. We show that under appropriate technical conditions, there exists a unique NE solution to the MFG, which is an ϵ-NE approximation to the N-player game, with [Formula: see text]. As an example, we analyze in detail a class of two-player stochastic games which extends the classical cash management problem to the game setting. In particular, we present numerical analysis for the cases of the single player, the two-player game, and the MFG, showing the impact of competition on the player’s optimal strategy, with sensitivity analysis of the model parameters.

Hamilton cycles in the semi-random graph process

The semi-random graph process is a single player game in which the player is initially presented an empty graph on n vertices. In each round, a vertex u is presented to the player independently and uniformly at random. The player then adaptively selects a vertex v, and adds the edge uv to the graph. For a fixed monotone graph property, the objective of the player is to force the graph to satisfy this property with high probability in as few rounds as possible.We focus on the problem of constructing a Hamilton cycle in as few rounds as possible. In particular, we present a novel strategy for the player which achieves a Hamiltonian cycle in c∗n rounds, where the value of c∗ is the result of a high dimensional optimization problem. Numerical computations indicate that c∗<2.61135. This improves upon the previously best known upper bound of 3n rounds. We also show that the previously best lower bound of (ln2+ln(1+ln2)+o(1))n is not tight.

Match and Game Performance Variables in Elite and Junior Men Singles Tennis Players

Junior players although easier approachable in terms of running tests and measurements, are less studied and examined particularly in such popular field of sports science as Performance Analysis. Most of the studies are focusing on elite athletes, whereas juniors are left without attention. This does not help them to successfully progress from junior to senior division. The aim of this study was to investigate the difference of the game struc- ture between Elite Level (EL) and Junior Level (JL) single tennis players. A total of 14 matches were analyzed including semi-finals and finals of International tennis tournaments. The game structure variables selected for this study included match duration (MD), game (set) duration (SD), rallies per game (set) (RPS), shots per rally (SPR), rally length (RL), rest time between rallies (RT), ball in play in seconds (BLs) and ball in play in percentage (BP%). Independent Sample T-test and Mann-Whitney test depending on the normality of data distribution were used for the comparison of game variables between Elite Level and Junior Level. Number of rallies, rest time between rallies, ball in play in percentage, and match duration were tested using Independent Sample T-test. Mann-Whitney test was used for comparing set duration, ball in play in seconds, rally length and shots per rally. There were statistically significant differences among the two categories in number of rallies, ball in play in percentage, ball in play in seconds and rally length (all at p&lt;0.05).

Automatic Move Pruning in General Single-Player Games

Move pruning is a low-overhead technique for reducing the size of a depth first search tree. The existing algorithm for automatically discovering move pruning information is restricted to games where all moves can be applied to every state. This paper demonstrates an algorithm which handles a general class of single player games. It gives experimental results for our technique, demonstrating both the applicability to a range of games, and the reduction in search tree size. We also provide some conditions under which move pruning is safe, and when it may interfere with other search reduction techniques.

Influence Of Dance And Multisport Participation On Functional Movement Screen Compared To Single Sport Athletes

PURPOSE: Functional movement capabilities are defining factors in athletic performance and possible predisposition for injury. Previous literature identifies sport and age-related normative values for FMS scores but has not examined differences between single sport, multisport, and multisport athletes who also participate in dance. Dance requires postural control, equilibrium maintenance, and stabilization along with synchronization of movement that may benefit athletes completing the FMS. The hypothesis for this study was that FMS subcategory and composite scores would differ between the three previously mentioned groups. METHODS: Cross-sectional design investigating 25 female high school aged (14-18 years old) athletes and the impact of dance and multisport participation on FMS compared to single sport athletes. Subjects included 10 single sport volleyball players, 9 multisport athletes, and 6 multisport athletes that included dance. Differences for composite and subcategory scores among the three groups were assessed for statistical significance (p < 0.05) via one-way ANOVA and post-hoc analysis to identify specific differences between groups. RESULTS: One-way ANOVA revealed statistical significance between three groups on the inline lunge (p = 0.014), active straight leg raise (p = 0.006), trunk stability push up (p = 0.018), and total score (p = 0.028). Post hoc analysis revealed statistical significance between single sport and multisport athletes on the inline lunge (p = 0.012) and total score (p = 0.034). Statistical significance was found between multisport athletes and dancers on the active straight leg raise (p = 0.005) and between single sport athletes and dancers on the trunk stability push-up (p = 0.032). CONCLUSIONS: This study identified that participation in multiple sports and dance influences performance related to motor control, functional patterning, and overall outcomes compared to single sport athletes. These findings can provide insight for professionals working with this population to consider the role that dance and participation in a variety of sports may have on motor development of the adolescent athlete from an educational, intervention, and performance perspectives.

The Effect of Core Stability Training on Dynamic Balance and Smash Stroke Performance in Badminton Players - An Evidence Based Study

Background: Badminton is one of the most popular sports and fastest racket sports in the world in which single or double players striking shuttle cock to and fro across the net to score a point. The important components for badminton players are muscle strength, muscular endurance, power, speed, agility, flexibility, balance and coordination. Core stability training is one of the essential fitness components of any racket sports player, especially for badminton players during smashing the shuttlecock smash through the game. Purpose: The purpose is to study the scientific evidences regarding the effect of core stability training on dynamic balance and smash stroke performance in badminton players. Methodology: A search for relevant articles was carried out using key words- Badminton, core stability training, dynamic balance and smash stroke performance and search engines- Google Scholar, PubMed, PEDro, Science Direct, SPOERT Discuss, Research Gate and CINAHL. Studies were selected from year 2010-2019. Ten studies were included in which there were 2 systemic reviews, 5 RCT, 2 correlation study,2 experimental study, and 1 cross sectional study. Results: 12 studies were reviewed from which 11 studies concluded that core stability training is effective in improving dynamic balance and smash stroke performance in badminton players. Conclusion: Based on the analysis of these 12 articles, it can be concluded that core stability training is effective in improving dynamic balance and smash stroke performance in badminton players. Clinical Implication: Core stability training is found to be effective improving and smash stroke performance in athletes with various racquet sports and can be performed to improve athletics skill performance. Keywords: Badminton, Core stability training, Dynamic balance and Smash stroke performance

An Interactive Design Framework to Explore Fault-Tolerant and Low-Energy Reconfigurable Architectures

Domain-specific customized reconfigurable architectures show great promise for low energy applications as they can be tailored according to the suite of applications. In order to design new optimized architectures, we need to be able to consider and evaluate tradeoffs, and explore design choices efficiently. In this paper, we present an interactive design framework to explore low energy and fault-tolerant reconfigurable architectures. This allows users to experiment their ideas, try out-of-the-box strategies, and analyze their results visually. This can help designers and researchers understand the bottlenecks and constraints of different approaches in a better way. This can also help students learn digital design and reconfigurable computing concepts in a fun and interactive way. The framework has two gameplay modes – single player and community play. In single player version, users can work on their individual levels where as community play allows users to build upon other users’ solutions. The game offers in-depth tutorials over the variety of gameplay elements as well as give users insight on how the game elements relate to the critical design concerns of reconfigurable architectures, such as, power, performance, area, and fault tolerance.

How Human Centered AI Will Contribute Towards Intelligent Gaming Systems

A paradigm shift towards human-centered intelligent gaming systems is gradually setting in. Such intelligent gaming systems with embedded machine learning algorithms would explain player motivations, help design more personalized single and collaborative player experiences, transfer and generalize the learning from game to game. The multi-modal user behavior trajectories, both in-game and across various platforms, incorporate heterogeneous information and graph structures. These gaming modalities range from text, audios, video demos, activity replays, and social networks to psychological questionnaires. Identifying decision-making patterns and strategies by observing in-game behavior actions and mining heterogeneous sources could construct a more holistic representation of the gaming community. Human priors publicly available on the World Wide Web would inspire the modeling for human-like non-player characters, adaptive recommendation systems, automatic game design, testing, and human-AI collaborations. My doctoral research goal is to mine, represent, and learn from human priors existing in the interactive entertainment community's heterogeneous sources and introduce ways to model single and multi-agent interactive behavior patterns.

Single Player Monte-Carlo Tree Search Based on the Plackett-Luce Model

The problem of minimal cost path search is especially difficult when no useful heuristics are available. A common solution is roll-out-based search like Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS). However, MCTS is mostly used in stochastic or adversarial environments, with the goal to identify an agent's best next move. For this reason, even though single player versions of MCTS exist, most algorithms, including UCT, are not directly tailored to classical minimal cost path search. We present Plackett-Luce MCTS (PL-MCTS), a path search algorithm based on a probabilistic model over the qualities of successor nodes. We empirically show that PL-MCTS is competitive and often superior to the state of the art.

Growth and Economic Performance of the Norwegian Wind Power Industry and Some Aspects of the Nordic Electricity Market

Electricity has been produced in Norway in hydropower plants since 1877. The first wind power plant was put into operation in 1986. The growth in wind power production was weak in the first years after the turn of the millennium, but after Norway joined the Swedish subsidy scheme Tradable Green Certificates in 2012, there was significant growth in the wind power industry. While most of the hydropower production in Norway is owned by the public sector, the majority of wind power production is owned by foreign investors. Since wind power has been very much discussed in Norway, a levelized cost of energy (LCOE) model that can be well suited for this type of discussion is presented. The point here is that one must include all the costs, including the externalities. The Norwegian electricity market is dominated by a single player: Nord Pool. Ninety-six percent of all the electricity produced in Norway is sold through the power exchange Nord Pool, and the prices set by Nord Pool affect the finances of all the electricity producers in Norway, as well as producers in Scandinavia and the Baltic countries. This paper is a survey of the growth, development of production and economic performance of the Norwegian wind power industry and some aspects of the electricity market in the Nordic countries.

Rancang Bangun Game Getuk Shooter Menggunakan Algoritma Collision Detection Berbasis Android

Android Based Game has grown rapidly, with the growing user of smartphones and tables in this world. The game maker industry also has many opportunities to produce games. Many advantages of producing games because of many enthusiasts for the game. Making game is an interesting field to learn because of the great potential both in terms of science and in terms of commercial. In this study the author designs and builds an application of the Android based Getuk Shooter game using Collision Detection algorithm for collision attack detection. The method used in this research is RUP method, which is method of software development done repeatedly. The result of this research is to produce Android based mobile game in the form of single player getuk vertical shot that can train the dexterity of player with 2D display and it consists of 3 levels, which can run on android smartphone.Key words : Android, game, collision, shooting

Analysis of athletes competition videos based on hypothesis testing: Case study of elite badminton single players

The study aimed to establish a general framework for the analysis of the athletes’ competition videos through two badminton games (n=5 sets) between Kento Momota and Viktor Axelsen. Version 3.8 of the data analysis software Python was used. The results of the study showed that for Momota and Axelsen, the percentages of winning long rallies were 52.05 and 46.48, respectively and the percentages of winning in monster rallies were 62.50 and 57.14, respectively. When the number of shots in a rally was greater than 14.40, the rallies won by Momota and Axelsen were 7.60 and 6.60, respectively. And winner of the subsequent rally after 14.40, the rallies won by the two were 9.40 rallies and 4.40 rallies. When Momota hit less diagonally in the subsequent rally, he won 58 of 90 rallies, with a success rate of 64.44%. Therefore, the three hypotheses of two variables and their quantitative research resulted in the hypothesis of a significance level of p ≤ 0.01, respectively. the theoretical contribution of this article is to put forward a research on the video of the athlete’s game and construct an effective theoretical model, which provide a reference for the coaching team and the athletes.

Convergent and Divergent Thinking Skills in Electrical Engineering Gaming Framework

This paper focuses on the participants who are categorized based on the number of times they played the same level in an online scientific game. An open-source scientific puzzle game UNTANGLED is used to perform this research. Telemetry data of more than 600 players is extracted from the database is divided into two groups:&nbsp;single&nbsp;(players who played a puzzle only one time) and&nbsp;multiple&nbsp;(players who played the same puzzle more than one time). Analysis performed on these two groups helps to examine convergent and divergent thinking skills. Statistical tests were performed to assist in learning the significance of the two groups based on dependent variables score and type of moves used in the gaming framework. This study is performed by considering more than 700 players' solutions. The findings obtained show that the&nbsp;single&nbsp;and&nbsp;multiple&nbsp;groups have no significant difference in their performance, and&nbsp;multiple&nbsp;group players obtained top scores alongside&nbsp;single&nbsp;group players. Results show that&nbsp;single&nbsp;group players could have convergent thinking that can provide only one solution for a given problem. In contrast,&nbsp;multiple&nbsp;group players could possess divergent thinking that can offer diverse solutions to the same problem from different perspectives. Finally, this paper dispenses recommendations for STEM educators and scientific game designers to develop open-ended frameworks that reward both thinking competencies. The novelty of this study is to show the consequences of including features that enhance both convergent and divergent thinking skills to solve open-ended problems in electrical engineering.&nbsp;&nbsp;

A Strategical Approach for Implementing Digital Games on FPGA

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are providing potential solutions to the most of the technological advancements. Starting from the basic modeling of RISC and CISC processors to the complicated designs of processors for data analytics, the FPGAs are being used. Parallelism and Pipelining are the features that are enabling for its application is almost all the domains of Electronics and Communications Industry. In view of such applications, getting expertise in implementation of Digital System Designs on FPGA will become inevitable for Electronics and Communication Engineering Graduate. Learning from Gaming has proved to be successful from the very past. Inspired from the Project based learning pedagogy [15], we have come up with a novel idea of making a student learn FPGA in the process of designing and implementing a single player and two player games. The entire problem formulation of designing these games is divided into tasks and student will be learning these tasks initially. Later, integrating such tasks will evolve into games. As a part of these five games, namely Snake game, Spaceman game, Pacman game, Tic-Tac-Toe and Battle tanker games were successfully implemented on the NEXYS4 DDR FPGA Board. This implementation is done using Xilinx Vivado Software.

A rare dance

The enormous success of The Last Dance, the sports documentary on Michael Jordan’s career, and especially his last season, is the result of a rare confluence of factors, each of which is a unique and rare phenomenon in the history of sport. Their combination has already turned the mini-series into a global media event of the kind that is usually reserved for live broadcasts of extraordinary events. A basketball player with unusual personal and professional abilities, supported by a highly polished and well-oiled marketing system; the specific window of time in which his star shone – the late 1990s, when the era of media commercialization and globalization flourished, yet before the emergence of social media and their typical critical discourse; the rise in sports documentaries in recent years; and encasing all of these is the time of the documentary’s broadcast, when sports life across the world ceased due to the coronavirus. The mini-series, which seemingly deals with a single season in the career of a single player in a single sport, is actually so much more. It is a composition reflecting much wider social, sports and media phenomena.

Solving pictorial jigsaw puzzles via Internet-based collective intelligence

Pictorial jigsaw (PJ) puzzles are a well-known leisure game for humans. Usually, a PJ puzzle game is played by one or several players face-to-face in physical space. In this paper, we focus on how to solve PJ puzzles in cyberspace by a group of physically-distributed players. We propose an approach to solve PJ puzzles using stigmergy-inspired Internet-based human collective intelligence. The core of the approach is a continuously-executing loop, namely, the EIFloop, which consists of three activities: exploration, integration, and feedback. During the explorationactivity, each player tries to solve the PJ puzzle alone, without direct interaction with the other players. At any time, the result of a players exploration represents a partial solution to the PJ puzzle and a set of rejected neighboring relationships between the puzzle pieces. The results of all players explorations are integrated in real time through the integrationactivity, forming a continuously-updated collective opinion graphCOG). Through the feedbackactivity, each player is provided with personalized feedback information based on the current COG and the players current exploration results, in order to accelerate his/her puzzle-solving process. Exploratory experiments show that:(1) Supported by this approach, the time to solve PJ puzzles is nearly linear with respect to the reciprocal of the number of players. Furthermore, compared with the best single players in the experiments, the puzzle-solving time decreases by 31.36%–64.57% on average for groups composed of 2 to 10 players.linebreak(2) Supported by this approach, the feedback information received by the best player in a group has an average precision of 86.34%, and, as the group size increases, the feedback information in the puzzle-solving result of the best player increases gradually from 20% to 45%.(3) This approach exhibits a better scalability with puzzle size than that of a face-to-face collaboration among ten players. Additionally, it always leads to 100%-accurate puzzle-solving results, whereas the results of the automated PJ-puzzle solver have an average accuracy of only 52%.It is envisaged that these results will provide useful information or opinions to facilitate a broader application of human collective intelligence in the Internet environment.