Search results for "Computer Science Application"

A Playful Experiential Learning System With Educational Robotics

2020

This article reports on two studies that aimed to evaluate the effective impact of educational robotics in learning concepts related to Physics and Geography. The reported studies involved two courses from an upper secondary school and two courses from a lower secondary school. Upper secondary school classes studied topics of motion physics, and lower secondary school classes explored issues related to geography. In each grade, there was an “experimental group” that carried out their study using robotics and cooperative learning and a “control group” that studied the same concepts without robots. Students in both classes were subjected to tests before and after the robotics laboratory, to c…

The case of literacy motivation : Playful 3D immersive learning environments and problem-focused education for blended digital storytelling

2018

The University of Patras' Library Services designed and offered to primary and secondary schools the pilot educational program “From the Ancient to the Modern Tablets”, featuring immersive multimedia learning experiences about the book history. The pilot program consisted of three stages: a playful library tour, followed by an interactive game-based digital storytelling activity with game elements, and a collaborative creative reflective hands-on activity. Utilizing the avatar psychology power, the visualization and simulation affordances of 3D immersive learning environments and the appeal of storytelling and game-based learning, the “gamified” blended narrative on the book evolution enabl…

2020

Despite the positive aspects of information technology (IT) use, it is common for users to experience negative IT incidents. Examples of negative IT incidents include getting lost in an unfamiliar country due to a dysfunctional map application and missing a monetary insurance benefit due to the failure of an activity tracker application. Such incidents can harm IT providers by giving rise to user dissatisfaction, discontinued use, switching, and negative word-of-mouth. To minimize this harm, it is important to understand how users cope after negative incidents. Specifically, information systems (IS) researchers have called for research that uncovers the complex interplay of IT users’ coping…

Deliberate or Instinctive? : Proactive and Reactive Coping for Technostress

2019

Employees in organizations face technostress that is, stress from information technology (IT) use. Although technostress is a highly prevalent organizational phenomenon, there is a lack of theory-based understanding on how IT users can cope with it. We theorize and validate a model for deliberate proactive and instinctive reactive coping for technostress. Drawing from theories on coping, our model posits that the reactive coping behaviors of distress venting and distancing from IT can alleviate technostress by diminishing the negative effect of technostress creators on IT-enabled productivity. The proactive coping behaviors of positive reinterpretation and IT control can help IT users by in…

Taking on the “Dark Side”–Coping With Technostress

2020

Technostress is stress that individuals experience due to their use of information technology. It is associated with critical workplace consequences including reduced productivity. While the negative consequences are well known, what is less understood is how individuals can cope with technostress to alleviate them. We report on two studies that explain how organizational IT users can cope with technostress. The first is a qualitative study conducted in the U.K., by interviewing thirty executives/knowledge workers. Here, we identified seven coping behaviors that individuals engage in, in response to technostress. The second is a survey of 846 U.S. employees who use IT in their workplace. He…

Granulometric analysis of corneal endothelium specular images by using a germ–grain model

2007

Specular microscopy is widely used to study the human corneal endothelium status in vivo. In this paper, the corneal endothelium is represented as a binary image composed of the cell inscribed circles. The granulometric distribution function of the complement of this image is used as a functional descriptor, which provides information about the shape, size and spatial arrangement of cells. Experimental evaluation using bootstrap techniques shows its ability to discriminate between controls and pathological cases. It represents a reliable and graphical alternative to the classical indices (cell density, hexagonality and coefficient of variation of cell areas), which behave poorly when detect…

Lead Discovery of SARS-CoV-2 Main Protease Inhibitors through Covalent Docking-Based Virtual Screening

2021

During almost all 2020, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has constituted the major risk for the worldwide health and economy, propelling unprecedented efforts to discover drugs for its prevention and cure. At the end of the year, these efforts have culminated with the approval of vaccines by the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) giving new hope for the future. On the other hand, clinical data underscore the urgent need for effective drugs to treat COVID-19 patients. In this work, we embarked on a virtual screening campaign against the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Mpro chymotrypsin-like cysteine pro…

Risk Management for Sustainable Sovereign Debt Financing

2021

We model sovereign debt sustainability with optimal financing decisions under macroeconomic, financial, and fiscal uncertainty, with endogenous risk and term premia. Using a coherent risk measure we trade-off debt stock and flow risks subject to sustainability constraints. We optimize static and dynamic financing strategies and demonstrate economically significant savings from optimal financing compared with simple rules and consols, and find that optimizing the trade-offs can be critical for sustainability. The model quantifies minimum refinancing risk and maximum rate of debt reduction that a sovereign can achieve given its economic fundamentals, and an extension identifies optimal timing…

Flume experiments for assessing the dye-tracing technique in rill flows

2021

Abstract Flow velocity controls hillslope soil erosion and is a key hydrodynamic variable involved in sediment transport and deposition processes. The dye-tracer technique is one of the most applied methods for measuring velocity of shallow interrill and rill flow. The technique is based on the injection of a tracer in a specific point and the measurement of its speed to travel the known distance from the injection point to a given channel section. The dye-tracer technique requires that the measured surface flow velocity has to be corrected to obtain the mean flow velocity using a correction factor which is generally empirically deduced. The technique has two sources of uncertainties: i) th…

Learning-automaton-based online discovery and tracking of spatiotemporal event patterns.

2013

Discovering and tracking of spatiotemporal patterns in noisy sequences of events are difficult tasks that have become increasingly pertinent due to recent advances in ubiquitous computing, such as community-based social networking applications. The core activities for applications of this class include the sharing and notification of events, and the importance and usefulness of these functionalities increase as event sharing expands into larger areas of one's life. Ironically, instead of being helpful, an excessive number of event notifications can quickly render the functionality of event sharing to be obtrusive. Indeed, any notification of events that provides redundant information to the…