The last decade has seen an increasing demand from the industrial field of computerized visual inspection. Applications rapidly become more complex and often with more demanding real time constraints. However, from 2004 onwards the clock frequency of CPUs has not increased significantly. Computer Vision applications have an increasing demand for more processing power but are limited by the performance capabilities of sequential processor architectures. The only way to get more performance using commodity hardware, like multi-core processors and graphics cards, is to go for parallel programming. This article focuses on the practical question: How can the processing time for vision algorithms be improved, by parallelization, in an economical way and execute them on multiple platforms?
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This review of meta-analyses of outcome studies of adults receiving Computer-Based Health Education (CBHE) has two goals. The first is to provide an overview of the efficacy of CBHE interventions, and the second is to identify moderators of these effects. A systematic literature search resulted in 15 meta-analyses of 278 controlled outcome studies. The meta-analyses were analysed with regard to reported (overall) effect sizes, heterogeneity and interaction effects. The results indicate a positive relationship between CBHE interventions and improvements in health-related outcomes, with small overall effect sizes compared to non-computer-based interventions. The sustainability of the effects was observed for up to six months. Outcome moderators (31 variables) were studied in 12 meta-analyses and were clustered into three categories: intervention features (20 variables), participant characteristics (five variables) and study features (six variables). No relationship with effectiveness was found for four intervention features, theoretical background, use of internet and e-mail, intervention setting and self-monitoring; two participant features, age and gender; and one study feature, the type of analysis. Regarding the other 24 identified features, no consistent results were observed across meta-analyses. To enhance the effectiveness of CBHE interventions, moderators of effects should be studied as single constructs in high-quality study designs. http://www.journalofinterdisciplinarysciences.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/leontienvreeburg/
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Motivating students to actively engage in their studying efforts is an ongoing challenge, because motivation is a key factor in study success. In the work presented here, we investigate whether the use of a mobile app with a teacher-like avatar (StudyGotchi), based on the successful digital pet Tamagotchi, can be deployed to motivate and engage computer science university students in their blended learning programming course. A randomized controlled study was performed which showed mixed results. Lessons learned include (i) better understanding of how to effectively implement the game-mechanics, and (ii) ways to circumvent technical limitations in usage.
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Computer security incident response teams (CSIRTs) respond to a computer security incident when the need arises. Failure of these teams can have far-reaching effects for the economy and national security. CSIRTs often have to work on an ad hoc basis, in close cooperation with other teams, and in time constrained environments. It could be argued that under these working conditions CSIRTs would be likely to encounter problems. A needs assessment was done to see to which extent this argument holds true. We constructed an incident response needs model to assist in identifying areas that require improvement. We envisioned a model consisting of four assessment categories: Organization, Team, Individual and Instrumental. Central to this is the idea that both problems and needs can have an organizational, team, individual, or technical origin or a combination of these levels. To gather data we conducted a literature review. This resulted in a comprehensive list of challenges and needs that could hinder or improve, respectively, the performance of CSIRTs. Then, semi-structured in depth interviews were held with team coordinators and team members of five public and private sector Dutch CSIRTs to ground these findings in practice and to identify gaps between current and desired incident handling practices. This paper presents the findings of our needs assessment and ends with a discussion of potential solutions to problems with performance in incident response. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02179 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickvanderkleij1/
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Abstraction is considered an essential aspect of computational thinking. Primary schools are starting to include computational thinking into the curriculum. However, in order to guide their support, teachers need to know how to recognize abstraction. In this paper, we present how we can observe abstraction in young children tasked with solving an algorithmic assignment. In order to operationalize abstraction, we have used the layers of abstraction (LOA) model by Perrenet, Groote and Kaasenbrood. This model was originally used in the field of computer science and describes programming behavior at the level of software development, but has since been extended for use in primary education. We have operationalized this model for use with 5 to 6 year old students tasked with programming an educational robot. Their behavior has been related to each of the four layers of abstraction.Students were individually instructed with programming Cubetto, an educational robot, to reach a number of destinations, increasing in the level of algorithmic complexity. We analyzed audio and video recordings of the students interacting with Cubetto and a teacher. Verbal and non- verbal behavior were categorized by two researchers and resulted in an observation schema.We conclude that our operationalization of the LOA model is promising for characterizing young students’ abstraction. Future research is needed to operationalize abstraction for older primary school students.
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A presentation about a skills gap: industry demands versus learning outcomes. The presentation deals with ongoing research about workplace learning in computing curricula.
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This textbook is intended for a basic course in problem solving and program design needed by scientists and engineers using the TI-92. The TI-92 is an extremely powerful problem solving tool that can help you manage complicated problems quickly. We assume no prior knowledge of computers or programming, and for most of its material, high school algebra is sufficient mathematica background. It is advised that you have basic skills in using the TI-92. After the course you will become familiar with many of the programming commands and functions of the TI-92. The connection between good problem solving skills and an effective program design method, is used and applied consistently to most examples and problems in the text. We also introduce many of the programming commands and functions of the TI-92 needed to solve these problems. Each chapter ends with a number of practica problems that require analysis of programs as well as short programming exercises.
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A major challenge for disaster scholars and policymakers is to understand the power dimension in response networks, particularly relating to collaboration and coordination. We propose a conceptual framework to study interests and negotiations in and between various civic and professional, response networks drawing on the concepts of “programming” and “switching” proposed by Manuel Castells in his work on the network society. Programming in disaster response refers to the ability to constitute response networks and to program/reprogram them in terms of the goals assigned to the network. Switching is the ability to connect different net-works by sharing common goals and combining resources. We employ these concepts to understand how the US Federal Emergency Management Agency organized its response in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. Our conceptual framework can be used both by disaster scholars and policymakers to understand how networked power is constructed and utilized.
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We propose a combined visual and text-based programming environment based on the actor model suitable for novice to expert programmers. This model encompasses simple communicating entities which easily scale from utilizing threads inside the computer to massive distributed computer systems. To design our proposed environment we classify different levels of programming users encounter when dealing with technologies in creative scenarios. We use this classification system as a foundation to design our proposed environment to support (novice) users on their way to a next level. This framework not only intends to support modern computing power through a concurrent programming paradigm, but is also intended to let users interact with it on the different classification levels.
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