Tutorial Section Research Articles

Drive Time Vehicle Breakdown Assistance

Drive Time Vehicle Breakdown Assistance is a user-centric platform dedicated to providing swift and efficient assistance to drivers experiencing vehicle issues. Through seamless chatbot integration, users can easily connect with mechanics in their vicinity, ensuring prompt resolution of breakdowns tailored to their vehicle type and location. Additionally, the platform offers a comprehensive tutorial section empowering users to tackle common issues independently, fostering a sense of self-sufficiency. Moreover, users can seamlessly search for nearby petrol stations from their location, ensuring they have access to essential services during their journeys. In summary, Drive Time Vehicle Breakdown Assistance is more than just a platform—it's a comprehensive solution designed to provide peace of mind to drivers, ensuring safer and more convenient journeys on the road. Keywords- assistance, breakdowns, chatbot, drivers, efficient, independence, mechanics, petrol, platform, tutorial

Effects of building information modeling prior knowledge on applying virtual reality in construction education: lessons from a comparison study

Abstract Applying building information modeling (BIM) and virtual reality (VR) in construction education is an effective way to achieve better study motivation, learnability, creativity, and observation of the real world. However, whether different levels of BIM prior knowledge affect students’ VR experimental learning, if at all, has not been examined. Therefore, this study employs a teaching intervention experiment to access the VR learning process based on the BIM prior knowledge. A total of 47 students, from the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, participated in the experiment. They were grouped according to whether they had taken the prior BIM tutorial section, with 23 participants in the group having completed the tutorial and 24 participants in the group that had not. Experiment materials were created and rendered via Autodesk Revit and Iris VR; the materials supported three tasks related to the underground design review scenarios and three other tasks about site planning review scenarios. After the experiment, a comparison study was done to discuss their differences based on VR task performances and satisfaction. The results revealed that the BIM prior knowledge mediated both the two-dimensional and three-dimensional navigations when students performed the tasks. Moreover, the relationship differences within the satisfactions showed that BIM prior knowledge effectively affected the learning outcomes. In conclusion, the comparison study implies that students’ BIM prior knowledge is efficacious in the students’ VR task performance and their VR satisfaction from cognitive and memory perspectives.

Scale for the Assessment and Rating of Ataxia (SARA): Development of a Training Tool and Certification Program

Monitoring of disease severity is of great importance for treatment and management of clinical trials. The Scale for Assessment and Rating of Ataxia (SARA) is a frequently used, short and easily applicable clinical scale used to assess the severity of ataxia. The objective of our study was to develop a training and certification tool for the SARA. SARA scores were recorded according to a standardized protocol and rated by three clinical experts in consensus. Four hundred thirty-eight videos of 67 patients were included in the SARA training tool. The tutorial section demonstrates a complete SARA examination on a healthy control. In the training section, users can compare their ratings to consensus ratings and access a video library covering the complete SARA range. The tool also includes a section that allows optional certification. The SARA training tool provides comprehensive and standardized training material and certification to reduce variability in applying the SARA. Standardization aims to improve the quality of patient care and research in ataxia.

Learning to play: understanding in-game tutorials with a pilot study on implicit tutorials

Tutorials are essential strategies used by game designers to improve video games' playability. The concept of “learning to play” exemplified by game tutorials also seems potentially related to game-based learning, but studies on game tutorials still appear scant. In order to support more in-depth researching on in-game tutorials and contribute to the current understanding of players' gameplay learning, this paper performed a literature review on research of game tutorials and revealed five commonly reported features of in-game tutorials. First, tutorials are typically considered more significant for games with complex gameplay. Second, players' gaming proficiency should be consulted when studying in-game tutorials. Third, the tutorials may be more effective when players can practice on their own and receive timely feedback. Fourth, providing players with just-in-time access to tutorials was thought to have a positive effect on their learning of the gameplay. Finally, the research in this area had been reported as deficient until 2017. Based on the literature review, a pilot study on implicit game tutorials was conducted to explore a more effective form of in-game tutorials. Using a designed questionnaire, the pilot study performed a quantitative analysis on recruited players’ feedback and in-game performance and tested the results against five hypotheses established upon the literature review. It suggested that providing players with implicit guidance and gamified instructive elements in the tutorial section can improve their in-game perceptions, and implicit tutorials are especially beneficial for players experienced in gaming. This study extended the previous studies on game tutorials and may contribute to the follow-up studies on game tutorials.

Suicide as an interpersonal phenomenon: Dyadic methodological and statistical considerations in suicide research.

Interpersonal risk and resilience factors are prominent in current conceptual models of suicide. A growing body of empirical evidence links suicidal thoughts and behaviors to a range of interpersonal phenomenon adding further support to the value of this line of inquiry. At present, research on interpersonal phenomenon focuses on assessing individuals' perceptions of interpersonal phenomenon, such as appraisals of burdensomeness, experienced loneliness, and thwarted belongingness. As this line of research continues to develop, we argue that it would be valuable to consider incorporating conceptual models of interpersonal phenomenon and corresponding methodological approaches from closely allied fields. After providing a brief overview of interpersonal models of suicide, we present an introduction to conceptual models of interpersonal phenomenon developed in relationship science, describe how these models can be applied to the study of interpersonal phenomenon in suicide research, and close with a guided tutorial on data collection and statistical analysis methods for testing hypotheses derived from these conceptual approaches. References for additional reading are provided, and the Appendix S1 provides simulated data sets and statistical code for the analyses in the tutorial section.

An Extensive Set of Accurate Fluoride Ion Affinities for p-Block Element Lewis Acids and Basic Design Principles for Strong Fluoride Ion Acceptors.

The computed fluoride ion affinity (FIA) is a valuable descriptor to assess the Lewis acidity of a compound. Despite its widespread use, the varying accuracy of applied computational models hampers the broad comparability of literature data. Herein, we evaluate the performance of selected methods (like DLPNO‐CCSD(T)) in FIA computations against CCSD(T)/CBS data and guide for the choice of suitable density functionals that allow the treatment of larger Lewis acids. Based on the benchmarked methods, we computed an extensive set of gas‐phase and solvation corrected FIA, that is covering group 13–16 elements featuring moderate to strong electron‐withdrawing substituents (190 entries). It permits an unbiased comparison of FIA over a significant fraction of the periodic table, serves as a source of reference for future synthetic or theoretical studies, and allows to derive some simple design principles for strong fluoride ion acceptors. Finally, the manuscript includes a tutorial section for the computation of FIA with and without the consideration of solvation.

Review on pneumatic operations in centrifugal microfluidics.

Centrifugal microfluidics allows for miniaturization, automation and parallelization of laboratory workflows. The fact that centrifugal forces are always directed radially outwards has been considered a main drawback for the implementation of complex workflows leading to the requirement of additional actuation forces for pumping, valving and switching. In this work, we review and discuss the combination of centrifugal with pneumatic forces which enables transport of even complex liquids in any direction on centrifugal systems, provides actuation for valving and switching, offers alternatives for mixing and enables accurate and precise metering and aliquoting. In addition, pneumatics can be employed for timing to carry out any of the above listed unit operations in a sequential and cascaded manner. Firstly, different methods to generate pneumatic pressures are discussed. Then, unit operations and applications that employ pneumatics are reviewed. Finally, a tutorial section discusses two examples to provide insight into the design process. The first tutorial explains a comparatively simple implementation of a pneumatic siphon valve and provides a workflow to derive optimum design parameters. The second tutorial discusses cascaded pneumatic operations consisting of temperature change rate actuated valving and subsequent pneumatic pumping. In conclusion, combining pneumatic actuation with centrifugal microfluidics allows for the design of robust fluidic networks with simple fluidic structures that are implemented in a monolithic fashion. No coatings are required and the overall demands on manufacturing are comparatively low. We see the combination of centrifugal forces with pneumatic actuation as a key enabling technology to facilitate compact and robust automation of biochemical analysis.

Homogeneous Molecular Catalysis of Electrochemical Reactions: Manipulating Intrinsic and Operational Factors for Catalyst Improvement.

Benchmarking and optimization of molecular catalysts for electrochemical reactions have become central issues in the efforts to match contemporary renewable energy challenges. In view of some confusion in the field, we precisely define the notions and parameters (potentials, overpotentials, turnover frequencies) involved in the accomplishment of these objectives and examine the correlations that may link them, thermodynamically and/or kinetically to each other (catalytic Tafel plots, scaling relationships, "iron laws"). To develop this tutorial section, we have picked as the model catalytic reaction scheme a moderately complex mechanism, general enough to illustrate the essential issues to be encountered and sufficiently simple to avoid the algebraic nightmare that a systematic study of all possible pathways would entail. The notion of scaling relations will be the object of particular attention, having notably in mind the delimitation of their domain of applicability. At this occasion, emphasis will be put on the necessity of clearly separating what is relevant to intrinsic characteristics (through standard quantities) to what deals with the effect of varying the reactant concentrations. It will be also stressed that the occurrence of such scaling relations, otherwise named "iron laws", is not a general phenomenon but rather concerns families of catalysts. Likewise, the search of a general correlation between the maximal turnover frequency and the equilibrium free energy of the electrochemical reaction appears as irrelevant and misleading. This general analysis will then be illustrated by experimental data previously obtained with the O2-to-H2O conversion catalyzed by ironIII/II porphyrins in N, N'-dimethylformamide in the presence of Brönsted acids.

The review of the Master Students’ self-study tutorial by Nataliia Maiier “University teacher training materials and tools of professional intercultural foreign language communicative competence formation”

The publication presents the review of the self-study tutorial for master students written by Natalia Maiier in terms of the master’s programme “University teacher training materials and tools of professional intercultural foreign language communicative competence formation”. The content of each tutorial section is being analyzed. The expediency of its use in teaching special elective professional disciplines to master students majoring in foreign language and culture teaching methodology is being emphasised.

A practical guide to replica-exchange Wang—Landau simulations

This paper is based on a series of tutorial lectures about the replica-exchange Wang-Landau (REWL) method given at the IX Brazilian Meeting on Simulational Physics (BMSP 2017). It provides a practical guide for the implementation of the method. A complete example code for a model system is available online. In this paper, we discuss the main parallel features of this code after a brief introduction to the REWL algorithm. The tutorial section is mainly directed at users who have written a single-walker Wang–Landau program already but might have just taken their first steps in parallel programming using the Message Passing Interface (MPI). In the last section, we answer “frequently asked questions” from users about the implementation of REWL for different scientific problems.

Can all voices be heard? Active learning strategies enhance FSL oral production

One of the challenges we face when teaching a language course is how to promote and increase students’ active participation. The instructor does the majority of the talking, and in doing so, neglects to provide enough opportunity for a student’s voice to be heard. This paper considers active learning as the best approach to teaching a second language. The instructor is essentially a learner, not a teacher. In a weekly tutorial section of an advanced FSL course, a group of students must design, present, and deliver a student-run reading workshop. This includes an assigned reading on a specific theme and a PowerPoint presentation. Various activities are used to enhance oral production, three of which are discussed: an online-based activity using Kahoot!, a debate on maternity leave benefits, and team-building through story-telling. Despite a few setbacks, active learning motivates students to take charge and personally contribute to their language learning.

The IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society has revamped educational video tutorials [Society News

The Instrumentation & Measurement Channel on IEEE TV at https://ieeetv.ieee.org/channels/ims has been updated and better focused on the scope and field of interest of the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society (IMS). Also, the Educational Video Tutorial section of the IMS website found at http:// ieee-ims.org/evts/tutorials is now showing the new video tutorials.

Janus—a comprehensive tool investigating the two faces of transcription

Protocols to generate strand-specific transcriptomes with next-generation sequencing platforms have been used by the scientific community roughly since 2008. Strand-specific reads allow for detection of antisense events and a higher resolution of expression profiles enabling extension of current transcript annotations. However, applications making use of this strandedness information are still scarce. Here we present a tool (Janus), which focuses on the identification of transcriptional active regions in antisense orientation to known and novel transcribed elements of the genome. Janus can compare the antisense events of multiple samples and assigns scores to identify mutual expression of either transcript in a sense/antisense pair, which could hint to regulatory mechanisms. Janus is able to make use of single-nucleotide variant (SNV) and methylation data, if available, and reports the sense to antisense ratio of regions in the vicinity of the identified genetic and epigenetic variation. Janus interrogates positions of heterozygous SNVs to identify strand-specific allelic imbalance. Janus is written in C/C++ and freely available at http://www.ikmb.uni-kiel.de/janus/janus.html under terms of GNU General Public License, for both, Linux and Windows 64×. Although the binaries will work without additional downloads, the software depends on bamtools (https://github.com/pezmaster31/bamtools) for compilation. A detailed tutorial section is included in the first section of the supplemental material and included as brief readme.txt in the tutorial archive. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Formation, Simulation and Restoration of Hypertelescopes Images

This article first provides a historical and detailed introduction to the image formation models for diluted pupils array and their densified versions called hypertelescopes . We propose in particular an original derivation showing that densification using a periscopic setting like in Michelson’s 20 − foot interferometer, or using inverted Galilean telescopes are fully equivalent. After a review based on previous reference studies (Tallon & Tallon-Bosc 1992; Labeyrie 1996; Aime 2008 and Aime et al. 2012), the introductory part ends with a tutorial section for simulating optical interferometric images produced by cophased arrays. We illustrate in details how the optical image formation model can be used to simulate hypertelescopes images, including sampling issues and their effects on the observed images. In a second part of the article, we address the issue of restoring hypertelescope images and present numerical illustrations obtained for classical (constrained Maximum Likelihood) methods. We also provide a detailed survey of more recent deconvolution methods based on sparse representations and of their spread in interferometric image reconstruction. The last part of the article is dedicated to two original and numerical studies. The first study shows by Monte Carlo simulations that the restoration quality achieved by constrained ML methods applied to photon limited images obtained from a diluted array on a square grid, or from a densified array (without spectral aliasing) on a grid, are essentially equivalent. The second study shows that it is possible to recover in hypertelescopes images quasi point sources that are not only far outside the clean field, but also superimposed on the replicas of other objects. This is true at least for the considered pupil array and in the limit of vanishing noise.

Accounting for tutorial teaching assistants’ buy-in to reform instruction

Successful implementation of tutorials includes establishing norms for learning in the tutorial classroom. The teaching assistants (TAs) who lead each tutorial section are important arbiters of these norms. TAs who value (buy into) tutorials are more likely to convey their respect for the material and the tutorial process to the students, as well as learning more themselves. We present a case study of a TA who does not buy into certain aspects of the tutorials he teaches and demonstrate how his lack of buy-in affects specific classroom interactions. We would hope to design professional development programs to help TAs appreciate the power of tutorial instruction. However, our research suggests that the typical professional development activities offered to tutorial TAs are not likely to be effective. Instead, it appears that what we call the ``social and environmental context'' of the tutorials---including classroom, departmental, and institutional levels of implementation---has the potential to strongly affect TA buy-in to tutorials and probably outweighs the influence of any particular activity that we might prepare for them.

Focus on Photonics and Imaging

Focus on Photonics and Imaging

Tutorial section: There is no silver bullet -- a guide to low-level data transforms and normalisation methods for microarray data

To overcome random experimental variation, even for simple screens, data from multiple microarrays have to be combined. There are, however, systematic differences between arrays, and any bias remaining after experimental measures to ensure consistency needs to be controlled for. It is often difficult to make the right choice of data transformation and normalisation methods to achieve this end. In this tutorial paper we review the problem and a selection of solutions, explaining the basic principles behind normalisation procedures and providing guidance for their application.

PhotochemCAD 2: A Refined Program with Accompanying Spectral Databases for Photochemical Calculations¶

ABSTRACTThe PhotochemCAD program has been revised extensively. Calculations can be performed using eight modules (oscillator strength, transition dipole moment and natural radiative lifetime, Förster energy transfer, multicomponent analysis, blackbody radiator, artificial spectrum creation, transmission calculation, and analysis of energy transfer among linear multichromophore arrays). The user interface has been streamlined to facilitate visual display, operation of the various modules, input of user data via a wizard and output of spectra and calculations. The database of absorption and fluorescence spectra has been expanded to 150 photochemically relevant compounds. A database of solar spectra has been added. The program runs under Windows and is equipped with extensive literature references and help features, including a tutorial section with video files.

Sneak Previews

The September-October issue of Geophysics contains papers that will interest exploration geophysicists. In the Tutorial section, Bjorn Ursin presents integrals in the angle domain that can be used for migration and inversion of data recorded in anisotropic media. This paper establishes a solid mathematical foundation for angle-domain studies, which will be useful for studies in AVO and multiple elimination.

Linking Business Processes and Transaction Cycles

Information technology enables companies to move from functional-managed, cycle-based organizations to process-managed organizations. Despite this change, business classes continue to be organized along functional lines and do not provide an overall, integrating framework (Walker and Ainsworth 2001). As a result, students may not understand business processes and the relationship between business processes and accounting transaction cycles. This paper presents a tutorial for a fictitious pizza delivery company to help students understand business processes and link them with accounting transaction cycles. Designed for a first semester accounting information system class, this comprehensive tutorial covers data flow diagrams; flowcharts; and resources, events, and agents (REA) modeling. The tutorial includes review questions and exercises. Teaching notes and solutions follow the tutorial section.