Media Research Center

About: Media Research Center is a based out in . It is known for research contribution in the topics: Collaborative learning & Educational technology. The organization has 491 authors who have published 950 publications receiving 28581 citations. The organization is also known as: MRC.

Home Appliance Management System for Monitoring Digitized Devices Using Cloud Computing Technology in Ubiquitous Sensor Network Environment

Abstract: The number of service techniques available for digitized home appliances is rapidly increasing as a result of various advances in digital technology. Users can now easily control and monitor home appliances via sensor networks formed among home appliances in ubiquitous environments. However, home appliances generate such large amounts of metadata about their status every month that in order to provide home appliance monitoring services to users, an approach that is able to store, analyze, and process these large amounts of metadata is needed. We propose a system that uses UPnP to collect metadata from home appliances and cloud computing technology to store and process the metadata collected from ubiquitous sensor network environments. Our proposed system utilizes a home gateway and is designed and implemented using UPnP technology to search for and collect device features and service information. It also provides a function for transmitting the metadata from the home appliances to a cloud-based data server that uses Hadoop-based technology to store and process the metadata collected by a home appliance monitoring service.

Tribocharge build-up and decay at a slider-disk interface

Abstract: As the gap between the head and disk decreases and the sensitivity of recording transducers increases, the head and disk are more likely to come in contact, which may damage the recording transducer during start/stop and flying cases. One important effect associated with the intermittent head-disk contacts is the tribocharge/tribocurrent phenomenon. In this study, tribocharge and tribocurrent generation during a pico-slider/disk interaction were measured by using an electrometer. These triboelectrical properties were compared with friction force and acoustic emission signals. The electrical potential difference between the slider and the disk was caused by mechanical interactions between them. The tribocharge was generated during the slider-disk interaction and its saturation charge level was about 1 V. The tribocharge build-up level was independent of the slider-disk interaction time. However, the tribocharge decayed when there was no interaction between the slider and the disk. The decay of tribocharge was inversely proportional to the square root of time. Tribocurrent generation coincided with tribocharge generation. The tribocurrent was also independent of the slider-disk interaction time. The current level measured in this study may not reach the electrostatic discharge (ESD) damage level, but it can induce the dissociation of lubricant.

Sound source elevation using spectral notch filtering and directional band boosting in stereo loudspeaker reproduction

Abstract: In this paper, a virtual elevation method of a sound source is proposed for a stereo loudspeaker reproduction. To achieve this goal, the proposed method first applies a head-related transfer function (HRTF) to the sound source to vertically localize it. Then, spectral notch filtering followed by directional band boosting is used for the further elevation of the sound source. In particular, a filter having three notches is designed by analyzing the spectral characteristics estimated from the measured HRTF database and by investigating the effect of spectral boosting on the perception of sound elevation. To evaluate the elevation performance of the proposed method, subjective listening tests are subsequently conducted using several sound sources, including male and female speech, as well as guitar, violin, and pop music. It is shown from the tests that the sound sources processed by the proposed method are most likely to be perceived as if they are played from stereo loudspeakers located at around 20°, even though the stereo loudspeakers are actually located on a horizontal plane, i.e.,0o.1.

Reigniting CSCL flash themes

Abstract: This journal promised 6 years ago to publish studies on what it termed “CSCL and its flash themes” (Stahl 2007). Rather than devoting single issues to specific topics of timely prominence, we decided to welcome submissions about selected emerging themes of CSCL research on an on-going basis. Accordingly, we set aflame again in the current issue discussion of the topics of argumentation, scripting, and tabletop interfaces. These three areas of computer support for collaborative learning continue to be active foci of CSCL research. To begin the issue, we spark a new theme with a paper on the use of eye-tracking technology to support and to research collaboration, an approach that has not previously been discussed in this journal but has been gathering attention at the ISLS conferences recently. It is noteworthy that research in these flash themes is still not merely a matter of refining the details of well-established findings, but continues to raise fundamental and controversial theoretical and methodological issues from a CSCL perspective. In introducing their study of gaze perception among dyads of students, Bertrand Schneider and Roy Pea begin with an extended discussion of joint attention. As they document, joint attention is foundational to collaborative interaction and, indeed, to human sociality. From infancy on, people learn to take advantage of different forms and media of joint attention to make intersubjective sense. Any mode of intentionality (whether individual, group, or collective) involves an orientation to some subject matter; communication accordingly requires a coordinated orientation to a shared object, with the understanding that this orientation is shared and with a shared sense of the object’s meaning. For two people to solve a problem together—e.g., in a CSCL setting like answering questions about diagrams—the participants must take (or enact) the problem as the same problem and they must see (and describe) the object as the same object (Stahl 2013, Chapter 8; Zemel and Koschmann 2013). This requirement of successful collaboration is complex, multi-modal, subtle, and learned over a lifetime. It involves discourse, gesture, gaze, cognition, social skills, Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning DOI 10.1007/s11412-013-9185-0

Successful Knowledge Building Needs Group Awareness: Interaction Analysis of a 9th Grade CSCL Biology Lesson

Abstract: This chapter presents an analysis of chat protocols from four 9th grade biology classrooms with 50 students at a Public School in Pittsburgh, PA Particular aspects of knowledge building processes in small computer-supported groups are described and explained We provide examples from the chat protocols that hint at successful knowledge building and from which we can learn something about how the development of knowledge takes place Moreover, we provide examples that illustrate why four types of group awareness (social, action, activity, and knowledge awareness) are crucial for collaboration, why a lack of group awareness may be detrimental to CSCL, and which strategies students will apply in order to establish group awareness and common ground Concluding, we point to implications for future design processes of CSCL scenarios