ABSTRACT:
Occupational stress is a serious problem that affects a large number of workers. Regardless financial or social status, age and profession, a person exposed to stress may develop health problems that can interfere with work and his quality of life. Thus, due to absenteeism and reduced productivity, companies lose money when its employees are stressed. In this scenario, it is important that employees use strategies to deal with such drawback. Coping with occupational stress can be basically achieved, in two ways: problem-focused or emotion-focused. Literature shows that strategies which take the needs of individual workers into account have a greater chance of success. On the other hand, computer games, mainly those based upon Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) techniques, offer players some experiences like: relaxation, sense of control, challenges, learning opportunities and immersion. These characteristics can contribute to the control process of occupational stress. The objective of this paper is to propose a new methodology for occupational stress, focused on emotion. In so doing, we use Serious Games and VR/AR techniques, considering particular needs of the employee.

ABSTRACT:
In this study, success rates of students enrolled in distance education courses to students enrolled in traditional courses at Sakarya University’s associate degree programs are compared. Success rates of students enrolled in distance programs and traditional programs in semester spring 2013 were analyzed with outcomes. The comparison is made for the following 3 programs; Computer Programming, Electronic Technologies and Mechatronics. Results indicated that average grades of distance students are lower than those in traditional programs.

Distance associate degree programs of Sakarya University first started in Adapazari Vocational High School in 2003. By 2013, there are 5 programs available, which are Computer Programming, Electronic Technologies, Mechatronics, Information Management, and Internet and Network Technologies. Two of these programs, Information Management, and Internet and Network Technologies programs aren’t being lectured in traditional education, only in distance education. For this reason, the other 3 programs which are being lectured in both distance education and traditional education are analyzed.

The students’ grades for each course which are common both for distance education and traditional education are analyzed. As a result of these analyzes, it is inferred that traditional education is more successful than distance education in associate degree programs.

ABSTRACT:
There is a service to help Internet users obtain answers to specific questions when they visit a Q&A site. A Q&A site is very useful for the Internet user, but posted questions are often not answered immediately. This delay in answering occurs because in most cases another site user is answering the question manually. In this study, we propose a system that can present a question that is similar to a question posted by a user. An advantage of this system is that a user can refer to an answer to a similar question. This research measures the similarity of a candidate question based on word and dependency parsing. In an experiment, we examined the effectiveness of the proposed system for questions actually posted on the Q&A site. The result indicates that the system can show the questioner the answer to a similar question. However, the system still has a number of aspects that should be improved.

ABSTRACT:
Recent research shows both students and professors rushing to adapt learning and teaching activities accessing ever-upgrading digital and social media formats like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and Prezi. Many institutions of higher education are embracing social media as viable, student-centered-classroom communication tools in a full range of subject disciplines, as well as in emerging interdisciplinary activities that prepare students for current trends in the job force. The new communication channels offer students a direct voice in discussion of topics of subject matter and current events, avenues for expedited exchange of information, and also introduction to skills needed to operate mobile computing devices, such as tablets and portable hand-held devices.

The advancing tools of online technology are also being used creatively in general communication across college campuses in higher education following standardized-use policies. The use of social media, for example, is effective in recruiting and interacting with prospective students and their parents or in expedited sharing of news or updated policies and procedures. The current endorsement of new technologies in various higher-education settings aligns with historical enthusiasm in education for interactive classroom dialogue. Over the years, progressive and pragmatic educators, such as John Dewey, Paulo Freire, Elliot Eisner and Larry Cuban have promoted interactive, inclusive pedagogical communication and experiential education since the early 1900s to the present.

For the past year-and-a-half, three faculty members at Black Hills State University have been conducting qualitative and quantitative research on the use of digital and social media in higher education. Since the beginning, the central goal has been to create awareness of digital technologies and social media as inter-subjective tools. More recently, the focus has become measurement of the learning experience and the development of curricula and policies that result in improved learning and teacher-learner communication.

ABSTRACT:
Engaging students to teach new concepts and to have students achieve individualized learning with the successful integration of those new concepts with their existing knowledge has been and remains the primary goal of college education. In this study drawing on information gathered over the past 2 plus decades, my findings have led me to develop two new separate ascending teaching-structures that are significantly helping me with content delivery, and simultaneously helping my students achieve greater success in mastering the material of my Physics 106 (Physics II, Electricity, Magnetism and Light) classes. These two teachingstructures, called Contextualization Teaching and Rich Contextualization Teaching (RCT), with each structure relying on various aspects of a modified Bloom’s cognitive domain taxonomy and on my description of and when to use each structure, along with my introduction of “subject learning convergences,” are described and illustrated here. Finally, of students with open-minds and mentally connected to the subject being taught, I make the suggestion that my two ascending teaching-structures can be used for teaching such students new-concepts in any academic course where engaging students to teach new concepts represents the primary focus.

ABSTRACT:
The participation of citizens in a democratic government is often influenced by the media, particularly new communication technologies. The differences between mass media and new media are pertinent to understanding how each works to shape our opinions and perceptions. Students need to understand the role of both traditional mass media outlets and new media in shaping public participation in our society.

ABSTRACT:
This paper presents a programming education support method based on Agile Development that encourages and builds on communication between students. Through mutual discussion, students using our approach transform their ideas into software and cooperate to write a program. The students complete the software through repetition and programming. Before completing the software program, the students learn to solve problems by working together. The students are encouraged to think and share ideas, and gain experience writing software. With this approach, students not only learn how to write programs, but also increase their logical thinking, problem-solving, and communication skills.

ABSTRACT:
In an effort to reduce costs and increase worker satisfaction, many businesses have implemented a concept known as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) or Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT). Similarly, many school districts are beginning to implement BYOT policies and programs to improve educational learning opportunities for students who have a wide variety of technology devices. BYOT allow districts with limited budgets enable usage of technology while improving student engagement. This paper explores the technology devices, and educational implications of policies, device management, security and included components.

ABSTRACT:
The deformation of an erythrocyte has been observed microscopically in the shear flow to detect the sublethal damage of an erythrocyte in vitro. A rheoscope system has been manufactured to observe the deformation of the suspended erythrocytes in the shear flow. The rheoscope consists of a pair of parallel disks and an inverted phase-contrast microscope. The human erythrocytes were suspended in the dextran aqueous solution, which has high viscosity. The erythrocytes are sheared in the Couette flow between a pair of counter rotating disks. The experiments with the rheoscope show following results. The erythrocytes deform from a biconcave to an ellipsoidal shape. The erythrocytes deform periodically at the double frequency of tank tread motion of the membrane of the deformed erythrocyte, when erythrocytes have the sublethal damage on the membrane.

ABSTRACT:
The effect of micro ridges on orientation of cultured cells has been studied in vitro. Several patterns of micro ridges have been fabricated on a transparent polydimethylsiloxane disk with the photo lithography technique. The ridges consist of several lines of rectangular column: the width of 0.003 mm, the interval of 0.007 mm. Variation has been made on the height of the ridge between 0.0003 mm and 0.0035 mm. C2C12 (mouse myoblast cell line originated with cross-striated muscle of C3H mouse) was cultured on the disk with the micro ridges for one week and was observed with an inverted phase contrast microscope. The experimental results show that cells adhere on the top of the ridge and align to the longitudinal direction of the micro ridges with the height between 0.0015 mm and 0.0025 mm.

ABSTRACT:
Group services like the audioconference require a minimum level of quality of service for multicast sessions. This work proposes a new overlay multicast architecture based on SIP extensions and a genetic algorithm. The architecture consists of a SIP Extender client (SE), a Multicast Gateway Agent (MGA) and a Multicast Manager (MM). The SE receives information about the most adequate MGA for it determined by a genetic algorithm inside the MM, then connects the chosen MGA and maintains connection with the MM itself. The genetic algorithm is implemented with JGAP(Java Genetic Algorithm Package) libraries. The SE and MGA are programmed with JainSIP and JainSDP libraries which contain Java structures associated with the SIP protocol and session description. Some experiments over UTP wired and WiFi IEEE802.11n network were performed. Partial results with static and dynamic MGA selection show that, if we compare the joining and leaving time measured inside a station containing SE client programmed with JainSIP and JainSDP libraries versus SJphone proprietary client, the software engineering may have more influence than the medium access method in the response time for a potential group member. Even more, the genetic algorithm at the MM minimizes the response time at great scale.

ABSTRACT:
This paper examines a group of graduate students and their previous experiences with online education, various teaching and learning online tools, and their perceptions on the effectiveness of these tools as it relates to their learning, interpersonal skills and communication. This paper presents the graduate student’s self-reported educational experience at a regional state university in the southeast United States in a 100% online Master’s Degree program. The data was collected through the use of a 28 open-ended question survey, which was completed by a group of 127 graduate students and the findings produced six main findings, which were:
 
1) The respondents indicated at a high percentage (85%) a high level (level 4, 5 and 6) of technology use and understanding.
 
2) The majority of the respondents (97%) indicated they preferred live synchronous sessions rather than discussion boards for learning content and communication.
 
3) The majority of the respondents (72%) indicated that when choosing future courses, the inclusion of discussion boards in a course was not important (34%) or somewhat unimportant (38%).
 
4) 100% of the respondents indicated that Live Elluminate Sessions were Highly Effective (65%) or Somewhat Effective (35%), as it pertained to understanding the content.
 
5) Respondents indicated that 59% (12% Highly Effective, 47% Somewhat Effective) of the respondents indicated discussion boards as an impactful way of learning content at the graduate level. It also shows that 41% (22% Somewhat Ineffective, 19% Not Effective).
 
This study helps universities identify the importance of synchronous learning in a digital format when delivering online teaching and learning. There is a clear change in the needs of students enrolled in 100% online courses, which will force university faculty to increase the synchronous interaction between them and their students and between the students and their peers. Keywords: Synchronous learning, discussion boards, Blackboard Elluminate.
 

ABSTRACT:
The wide use of digital images leads to the necessity of securing them when they enter into an insecure channel. Image cryptography plays a vital role in the modern communication. In this paper we propose a new image encryption scaling scheme, which will do both, image scaling and encryption. Cellular automata is used for key generation and wavelet transformation is used for image scaling. Encryption has been done in two steps: one before wavelet transformation and another one after the wavelet transformation. Performance evaluation results clearly show that the proposed method is better in all aspects.

ABSTRACT:
The development of Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED), using an optically transparent substrate material and organic semiconductor materials, has been widely utilized by the electronic industry when producing new technological products. The OLED are the base Poly (3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene), PEDOT, and Polyaniline, PANI, were deposited in Indium Tin Oxide, ITO, and characterized by UV-Visible Spectroscopy (UV-Vis), Optical Parameters (OP) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). In addition, the thin film obtained by the deposition of PANI, prepared in perchloric acid solution, was identified through PANI-X1. The result obtained by UV-Vis has demonstrated that the Quartz/ITO/PEDOT/PANI-X1 layer does not have displacement of absorption for wavelengths greaters after spin-coating and electrodeposition. Thus, the spectral irradiance of the OLED informed the irradiance of 100 W/m2, and this result, compared with the standard Light Emitting Diode (LED), has indicated that the OLED has higher irradiance. After 1000 hours of electrical OLED tests, the appearance of nanoparticles visible for images by SEM, to the migration process of organic semiconductor materials, was present, then. Still, similar to the phenomenon of electromigration observed in connections and interconnections of microelectronic devices, the results have revealed a new mechanism of migration, which raises the passage of electric current in OLED.

ABSTRACT:
This project focused on a pilot project implemented during the 2013-2014 academic year. The overall purpose was to facilitate interprofessional collaborative practice innovations through the development of leadership, core competencies, and the use of technology, especially among nurses. Nursing, medicine, and physician assistant students were educated on the IOM competencies for interprofessional teams and the core competencies identified by the Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert Panel [1] to develop knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to practice in the collaborative practice environments. The project addressed four goals: Develop faculty expertise and leadership in interprofessional collaborative practice to provide a current, high quality education to nursing, physician assistant, and medical students; Implement a culturally responsive and respectful collaborative interprofessional practice curriculum to prepare nurses, physician assistants, and medical students to deliver high quality, efficient, team-based care in a dynamically evolving environment; Focus interprofessional collaborative practice education on models and practices that lead to improvement in patient outcomes; and Evaluate the program and disseminate best practices. Findings from this pilot include strategies to engage different health professions’ students and faculty, partnering with community agencies, building an effective interprofessional team to guide the project, and seeking funding for extension and expansion of the offerings.

ABSTRACT:
In the developed stock markets the corporate governance aspect is crucial in the stock portfolio selection process for investor seeking to achieve shareholder value sustainability. In the emerging markets the importance of the corporate governance role just starts to be realized by the investors and by the corporate managers.

The present research, looking at the stock performance leaders and laggards, analyzes whether the corporate governance system matters to achieve long-term shareholder value within the Central and Eastern European stock markets universe. Corporate governance quality was assessed and compared among the out- and underperformers. The financial results plausibility and the ownership structure were considered as well. Additionally, the authors analyzed whether the quality of corporate governance influences the economic performance of the company.

The obtained results provide the proof that the corporate governance does matter as the market outperformers have above average corporate governance quality and provide trustworthy financial results more often than the underperforming companies. Besides, well-governed companies are also able to deliver more attractive financial results.