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學習型遊戲可提供學習者一個具備「滿足學習發生的基本需求」、「以問題解決為基礎」、「有趣」以及「吸引人」等特色的安全學習環境，而技能型學習遊戲更不同於一般認知與情意型遊戲，其設計過程除了著重事實、知識之外，更強調經由實際操作或練習使學生能真正習得某些動作和技能。因此，有哪些遊戲設計要素能吸引學習者，讓學習者在進行技能學習過程中感到有趣，進而達到學習目標，值得我們關切。再者，從學習型遊戲設計層面來看，重視學習情緒和使用者經驗是不可或缺的遊戲設計考量面向，特別是在數位學習環境中，哪些遊戲設計要素會對學生的學習情緒及學習成效產生影響，值得更進一步的探討。 因此，本研究採用兩款具遊戲設計要素差異之英文打字遊戲，探討技能型學習遊戲之遊戲設計要素對於學習者之學習情緒與學習成效之影響與關聯，以釐清技能型學習遊戲之遊戲設計要素如何影響學習者之正負面情緒以及學習成效，進而作為學習型技能遊戲設計時的參考。研究結果顯示，具遊戲設計要素差異之技能型英打學習遊戲對於引發女性學習者之負面情緒會產生顯著差異，而男性學習者則未產生顯著差異；本研究採用之兩款技能型英打學習遊戲，均可以有效增進學習者之學習成效，並且遊戲設計要素較高之技能型英打學習遊戲對於男性學習者較具學習成效；具遊戲設計要素差異之技能型英打學習遊戲，其遊戲設計要素之「適時回饋」為設計學習型遊戲時之最重要因素；而學習情緒會影響學習成效部分，僅在低打字能力學習者採用具遊戲設計要素差異之技能型英打學習遊戲時獲得部份驗證。 / Game-based learning can provide a safe environment with satisfied basic needs during learning process, problem solving domain foundation, funny and attractive characteristics for learners. Skill learning games are different from normal cognitive and affective games. The design of skill learning games emphasizes on not only facts and knowledge but also on learning some kinds of motion and skills by operation and practice, so we concerned about the key design features attracting learners to interest the learning process and get the learning goals. On the other hand, it is indispensable for key design features considering about learning emotions and learner’s experience, and it is also necessary to be further investigated about which feature will affect the learner’s emotion and learning performance. Two English typing games with different design features were adapted to investigate the effects and relations between design features and learner’s emotion and learning performance to clarify the positive or negative emotions and performance were affected by which design feature of the skill learning games and to set a reference for the game designer. The study results show that female learner’s negative emotion which was caused by different game design features of the English typing games was significantly affected, but male learner’s emotion was not. The two adapted games were both with learning performance, and her male learning performance was better with better game design features of the typing games. Proper feedback was the most important design feature. The effects of emotions to performance were partly proven from poor typing ability learners.

L'organització del treball artesà de les societats preindustrials en gremis o confraries d'ofici semblava reforçar les tesis que postulaven la rigidesa i la immobilitat de les societats d'Antic Règim. Però, els pocs treballs realitzats a Catalunya sobre les estratègies familiars adoptades pels menestrals han apuntat que la transmissió intergeneracional de l'ofici i les estratègies matrimonials dirigides a casar-se amb membres del mateix entorn professional potser no es donaven d'una manera tan general com la historiografia havia subratllat. Aquestes haurien estat dues de les fórmules seguides per les famílies menestrals a fi de preservar un patrimoni força eteri en un marc econòmic ple d'incerteses i serien les responsables de la imatge de societats estàtiques o poc mòbils. Respondre aquestes dues qüestions és el punt de partida d'aquest treball. Per dur-lo a terme s'han analitzat les estratègies familiars dels menestrals d'un centre urbà català, Mataró, entre els segles XVII i XIX. / La organización del trabajo artesanal de las sociedades preindustriales en gremios o cofradías de oficio parecía reforzar las tesis que postulaban la rigidez y la inmovilidad de las sociedades de Antiguo Régimen. Pero, los pocos trabajos sobre las estrategias familiares seguidas por las familias menestrales basados en Cataluña, han apuntado como la transmisión intergeneracional del oficio y las estrategias matrimoniales dirigidas a casarse con miembros del mismo entorno profesional, quizá no se daban tan extensiblemente como siempre había subrayado la historiografía. Éstas habrían estado dos de las fórmulas seguidas por las familias menestrales para preservar un patrimonio bastante etéreo en un marco económico lleno de incertidumbre y serian las responsables de la imagen de sociedades estáticas o poco móviles. Responder a estas dos preguntas es el punto de partida de este estudio. Para ello, se han analizado las estrategias familiares de los menestrales de un centro urbano catalán, Mataró, entre los siglos XVII y XIX. / The organization of the home-produced work in pre-industrial societies in guilds or brotherhoods seemed to reassert the thesis which postulates the rigidity and immovability of societies during the Old Regime. But the few jobs done in Catalonia about the familiar strategies adopted by artisans, have pointed out that the intergenerational transmission of professions and marriage strategies in order to get married to members from the same professional area was not as usual as the historiography had shown. These strategies had been two of the ways followed by families of artisans in order to preserve an ethereal patrimony in an economical setting full of uncertainties, and they would be the responsible of the static and immovable societies. The aim of this study is to answer these two questions. In order to do so, familiar strategies of artisans from Mataró, an urban Catalan settlement during the XVIIth-XIXth centuries, have been analysed.

Over the period of candidature, write and direct a feature film to completion. Furthermore, undertake a thorough reflective phase which involves the analysis of each aspect relating to those key components, writing and directing. Through this form of creative practice and utilising state of the art digital filmmaking techniques it is hoped that an addition to knowledge will be achieved.

This thesis describes a set of image analysis tools developed for the purpose of quantifying the distribution of chromatin in (light) microscope images of cell nuclei. The distribution or pattern of chromatin is influenced by both external and internal variations of the cell environment, including variations associated with the cell cycle, neoplasia, apoptosis, and malignancy associated changes (MACs). The quantitative characterisation of this pattern makes possible the prediction of the biological state of a cell, or the detection of subtle changes in a population of cells. This has important application to automated cancer screening. The majority of existing methods for quantifying chromatin distribution (texture) are based on the stochastic approach to defining texture. However, it is the premise of this thesis that the structural approach is more appropriate because pathologists use terms such as clumping, margination, granulation, condensation, and clearing to describe chromatin texture, and refer to the regions of condensed chromatin as granules, particles, and blobs. The key to the structural approach is the segmentation of the chromatin into its texture primitives. Unfortunately all of the chromatin segmentation algorithms published in the literature suffer from one or both of the following drawbacks: (i) a segmentation that is not consistent with a human's perception of blobs, particles, or granules; and (ii) the need to specify, a priori, one or more subjective operating parameters. The latter drawback limits the robustness of the algorithm to variations in illumination and staining quality. The structural model developed in this thesis is based on several novel low-, med-ium-, and high-level image analysis tools. These tools include: a class of non-linear self-dual filters, called folding induced self-dual filters, for filtering impulse noise; an algorithm, based on seeded region growing, for robustly segmenting chromatin; an improved seeded region growing algorithm that is independent of the order of pixel processing; a fast priority queue implementation suitable for implementing the watershed transform (special case of seeded region growing); the adjacency graph attribute co-occurrence matrix (AGACM) method for quantifying blob and mosaic patterns in the plane; a simple and fast algorithm for computing the exact Euclidean distance transform for the purpose of deriving contextual features (measurements) and constructing geometric adjacency graphs for disjoint connected components; a theoretical result establishing an equivalence between the distance transform of a binary image and the grey-scale erosion of its characteristic function by an elliptic poweroid structuring element; and a host of chromatin features that can be related to qualitative descriptions of chromatin distribution used by pathologists. In addition, this thesis demonstrates the application of this new structural model to automated cervical cancer screening. The results provide empirical evidence that it is possible to detect differences in the pattern of nuclear chromatin between samples of cells from a normal Papanicolaou-stained cervical smear and those from an abnormal smear. These differences are supportive of the existence of the MACs phenomenon. Moreover the results compare favourably with those reported in the literature for other stains developed specifically for automated cytometry. To the author's knowledge this is the first time, based on a sizable and uncontaminated data set, that MACs have been demonstrated in Papanicolaou stain. This is an important finding because the primary screening test for cervical cancer, the Papanicolaou test, is based on this stain.

Studies in Genre Analysis have been developed with the aim of exploring the typification of genres of the work environment and interpreting their funtions according to the discursive communities in which they operate. Some examples are studies carried out by Bazerman (2005) and Devitt (1991) on documents from professional contexts. In that regard, Bazerman (2005) discusses notions such as genre, genre sets, genre systems and activity systems. Language practices in professional contexts have also been the object of investigations among Brazilian research teams, for instance LAEL at PUC/SP and PUC/RJ, in efforts to understand how the participants of a communicative event interact and how their lexicogrammatical choices construe meaning. In that sense, the present study approaches the system of genres adopted in the selective process for hiring a salesperson, conducted by a cooperative company in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. This system of genres comprises several texts: Want Ad, Presentation Letter, Curriculum Vitae and Interview. The objective of this study is to investigate the system of genres for job application from the perspective of language as social practice with a focus on practices circumsbribed to the work sphere. This way, the struture of the texts within this system of genres is analyzed using the framework of Systemic-Functional Linguistics (Halliday, 1994; 2004 and Halliday & Hasan, 1989). The texts are analyzed in their organizational patterns and clauses are classified considering the type of processes, according to the System of Transitivity. Besides, the communicative purposes as welll as the characterization of the participants in the activities system are identified. Contrary to initial expectations, the interview was pointed out in the results as the most relevant genre in evaluating the applicants. Overall, the results offer an understanding of the interaction as characterized by specific aims in a particular professional sphere and can be valid for language educators, mainly those who work with Portuguese as mother tongue for instrumental purposes with a focus on professional genres. / Estudos em Análise de Gênero têm sido desenvolvidos a fim de explorar a tipificação de gêneros do contexto do trabalho e interpretar suas funções de acordo com as comunidades discursivas em que operam. Alguns exemplos são os estudos desenvolvidos por Bazerman (2005) e Devitt (1991) sobre documentos de contextos profissionais. Em vista disso, Bazerman (2005) discute noções sobre gênero, conjunto de gêneros, sistema de gêneros e sistema de atividades. A linguagem voltada a contextos profissionais também tem sido objeto de análise para grupos de pesquisa brasileiros, por exemplo, o do LAEL da PUC/SP e o da PUC/RJ, no sentido de compreender como os participantes de um evento comunicativo interagem e como suas escolhas léxico-gramaticais constroem significado. Assim, o tema do presente estudo diz respeito ao sistema de gêneros de um processo seletivo para contratação de vendedor autônomo, realizado em uma empresa cooperativa do interior do Rio Grande do Sul. Esse sistema de gêneros acomoda vários textos: Anúncio de Emprego, Carta de Apresentação, Curriculum Vitae e Entrevista Pessoal. O objetivo deste estudo é investigar o sistema de gêneros da seleção a emprego a partir da perspectiva de linguagem como prática social, com ênfase nas práticas relacionadas às esferas do trabalho. Desse modo, a estrutura dos exemplares desse sistema de gêneros é descrita a partir de propostas da Lingüística Sistêmico-Funcional (Halliday, 1994; 2004 e Halliday e Hasan, 1989). São identificados os padrões de organização dos textos e classificados os processos das orações, conforme o Sistema de Transitividade. E, são identificados os propósitos comunicativos e o perfil dos participantes desse sistema de atividades. Na avaliação dos candidatos, contrariando a expectativa inicial, os resultados destacam a relevância maior para a Entrevista Pessoal. Enfim, a discussão aponta à compreensão de como se dá a interação, caracterizada por propósitos específicos em uma situação profissional e pode ser válida para os profissionais da linguagem, principalmente, àqueles que trabalham com o ensino instrumental da língua materna, voltado aos gêneros do contexto empresarial.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:48:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 JoaoMGCJ_DISSERT.pdf: 2157600 bytes, checksum: e625012e4cd3f5e995b205310bff8592 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-04-29 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior / The main goal of Regression Test (RT) is to reuse the test suite of the latest version of a software in its current version, in order to maximize the value of the tests already developed and ensure that old features continue working after the new changes. Even with reuse, it is common that not all tests need to be executed again. Because of that, it is encouraged to use Regression Tests Selection (RTS) techniques, which aims to select from all tests, only those that reveal faults, this reduces costs and makes this an interesting practice for the testing teams. Several recent research works evaluate the quality of the selections performed by RTS techniques, identifying which one presents the best results, measured by metrics such as inclusion and precision. The RTS techniques should seek in the System Under Test (SUT) for tests that reveal faults. However, because this is a problem without a viable solution, they alternatively seek for tests that reveal changes, where faults may occur. Nevertheless, these changes may modify the execution flow of the algorithm itself, leading some tests no longer exercise the same stretch. In this context, this dissertation investigates whether changes performed in a SUT would affect the quality of the selection of tests performed by an RTS, if so, which features the changes present which cause errors, leading the RTS to include or exclude tests wrongly. For this purpose, a tool was developed using the Java language to automate the measurement of inclusion and precision averages achieved by a regression test selection technique for a particular feature of change. In order to validate this tool, an empirical study was conducted to evaluate the RTS technique Pythia, based on textual differencing, on a large web information system, analyzing the feature of types of tasks performed to evolve the SUT / O objetivo dos testes de regress?o (RT) ? reutilizar o conjunto de testes da ?ltima vers?o de um software em sua vers?o atual, para maximizar o valor dos testes j? desenvolvidos e garantir que antigas funcionalidades continuem corretas ap?s as novas modifica??es. Mesmo com o reuso, ? comum que nem todos os testes precisem ser executados novamente e para evitar o desnecess?rio, ? estimulada a utiliza??o de t?cnicas de sele??o dos testes de regress?o (RTS), que buscam selecionar dentre todos os testes, apenas aqueles capazes de revelar faltas, isto reduz custos e torna a pr?tica realmente atrativa para as equipes de teste. Diversos estudos recentes avaliam a qualidade da sele??o realizadas por t?cnicas de RTS, identificando qual delas apresenta melhores resultados atrav?s de m?tricas como a inclus?o e a precis?o. As t?cnicas de RTS deveriam buscar no sistema sob teste (SUT) por testes que revelem faltas, entretanto, como este ? um problema sem solu??o vi?vel, a alternativa ? buscar por testes que revelem as modifica??es, onde as faltas podem ocorrer. Contudo, tais modifica??es podem alterar o pr?prio fluxo de execu??o dos algoritmos, fazendo com que alguns testes n?o exercitem mais os mesmos trechos. Neste contexto, esta disserta??o de mestrado busca investigar se as modifica??es realizadas no SUT poderiam afetar a qualidade da sele??o dos testes realizada por uma RTS, e se sim, quais caracter?sticas apresentam as modifica??es que provocaram os erros, levando a RTS a incluir ou excluir testes erroneamente. Para tanto, foi desenvolvida uma ferramenta na linguagem Java para automatizar o c?lculo da inclus?o e precis?o m?dias alcan?adas por uma t?cnica de RTS para uma dada caracter?stica da modifica??o. A fim de validar a ferramenta, foi conduzido um estudo emp?rico para avaliar a t?cnica de RTS Pythia, baseada em diferencia??o textual, sobre um sistema de informa??o web de larga escala, analisando a caracter?stica dos tipos das tarefas realizadas para evoluir o SUT

Image processing algorithms have developed rapidly in recent years. Imaging functions are becoming more common in electronic devices, demanding better image quality, and more robust image capture in challenging conditions. Increasingly more complicated algorithms are being developed in order to achieve better signal to noise characteristics, more accurate colours, and wider dynamic range, in order to approach the human visual system performance levels.

La sélection de caractéristiques acoustiques appropriées est essentielle dans tout système de traitement de la parole. Pendant près de 40 ans, la parole a été généralement considérée comme une séquence de signaux quasi-stables (voyelles) séparés par des transitions (consonnes). Bien qu‟un grand nombre d'études documentent clairement l'importance de la coarticulation, et révèlent que les cibles articulatoires et acoustiques ne sont pas indépendantes du contexte, l‟hypothèse que chaque voyelle présente une cible acoustique qui peut être spécifiée d'une manière indépendante du contexte reste très répandue. Ce point de vue implique des limitations fortes. Il est bien connu que les fréquences de formants sont des caractéristiques acoustiques qui présentent un lien évident avec la production de la parole, et qui peuvent participer à la distinction perceptive entre les voyelles. Par conséquent, les voyelles sont généralement décrites avec des configurations articulatoires statiques représentées par des cibles dans l'espace acoustique, généralement par les fréquences des formants correspondants, représentées dans les plans F1-F2 et F2-F3. Les consonnes occlusives peuvent être décrites en termes de point d'articulation, représentés par locus (ou locus équations) dans le plan acoustique. Mais les trajectoires des fréquences de formants dans la parole fluide présentent rarement un état d'équilibre pour chaque voyelle. Elles varient avec le locuteur, l'environnement consonantique (co-articulation) et le débit de parole (relative à un continuum entre hypo et hyper-articulation). En vue des limites inhérentes aux approches statiques, la démarche adoptée ici consiste à étudier les transitions entre les voyelles et les consonnes (V1V2 et V1CV2) d‟un point de vue dynamique. / Speech plays a vital role in human communication. Selection of relevant acoustic speech features is key to in the design of any system using speech processing. For some 40 years, speech was typically considered as a sequence of quasi-stable portions of signal (vowels) separated by transitions (consonants). Despite a wealth of studies that clearly document the importance of coarticulation, and reveal that articulatory and acoustic targets are not context-independent, the view that each vowel has an acoustic target that can be specified in a context-independent manner remains widespread. This point of view entails strong limitations. It is well known that formant frequencies are acoustic characteristics that bear a clear relationship with speech production, and that can distinguish among vowels. Therefore, vowels are generally described with static articulatory configurations represented by targets in the acoustic space, typically by formant frequencies in F1-F2 and F2-F3 planes. Plosive consonants can be described in terms of places of articulation, represented by locus or locus equations in an acoustic plane. But formant frequencies trajectories in fluent speech rarely display a steady state for each vowel. They vary with speaker, consonantal environment (co-articulation) and speaking rate (relating to continuum between hypo- and hyper-articulation). In view of inherent limitations of static approaches, the approach adopted here consists in studying both vowels and consonants from a dynamic point of view.Firstly we studied the effects of the impulse response at the beginning, at the end and during transitions of the signal both in the speech signal and at the perception level. Variations of the phases of the components were then examined. Results show that the effects of these parameters can be observed in spectrograms. Crucially, the amplitudes of the spectral components distinguished under the approach advocated here are sufficient for perceptual discrimination. From this result, for all speech analysis, we only focus on amplitude domain, deliberately leaving aside phase information. Next we extent the work to vowel-consonant-vowel perception from a dynamic point of view. These perceptual results, together with those obtained earlier by Carré (2009a), show that vowel-to-vowel and vowel-consonant-vowel stimuli can be characterized and separated by the direction and rate of the transitions on formant plane, even when absolute frequency values are outside the vowel triangle (i.e. the vowel acoustic space in absolute values).Due to limitations of formant measurements, the dynamic approach needs to develop new tools, based on parameters that can replace formant frequency estimation. Spectral Subband Centroid Frequency (SSCF) features was studied. Comparison with vowel formant frequencies show that SSCFs can replace formant frequencies and act as “pseudo-formant” even during consonant production.On this basis, SSCF is used as a tool to compute dynamic characteristics. We propose a new way to model the dynamic speech features: we called it SSCF Angles. Our analysis work on SSCF Angles were performed on transitions of vowel-to-vowel (V1V2) sequences of both Vietnamese and French. SSCF Angles appear as reliable and robust parameters. For each language, the analysis results show that: (i) SSCF Angles can distinguish V1V2 transitions; (ii) V1V2 and V2V1 have symmetrical properties on the acoustic domain based on SSCF Angles; (iii) SSCF Angles for male and female are fairly similar in the same studied transition of context V1V2; and (iv) they are also more or less invariant for speech rate (normal speech rate and fast one). And finally, these dynamic acoustic speech features are used in Vietnamese automatic speech recognition system with several obtained interesting results.

Dans cette thèse, nous abordons le problème de l'analyse des sentiments. Plus précisément, nous sommes intéressés à analyser le sentiment exprimé dans les textes de médias sociaux.Nous allons nous concentrer sur deux tâches principales: la détection de polarité de sentiment dans laquelle nous cherchons à déterminer la polarité (positive, négative ou neutre) d'un texte donné et l'extraction de cibles d’opinion et le sentiment exprimé vers ces cibles (par exemple, pour le restaurant nous allons extraire des cibles comme la nourriture, pizza, service). Notre principal objectif est de construire des systèmes à la pointe de la technologie qui pourrait faire les deux tâches. Par conséquent, nous avons proposé des systèmes supervisés différents suivants trois axes de recherche: l'amélioration de la performance du système par la pondération de termes, en enrichissant de la représentation de documents et en proposant un nouveau modèle pour la classification de sentiment.Pour l'évaluation, nous avons participé à un atelier international sur l'évaluation sémantique (Sem Eval), nous avons choisi deux tâches: l'analyse du sentiment sur Twitter dans laquelle nous déterminer la polarité d'un tweet et l'analyse des sentiments basée sur l’aspect dans laquelle nous extrayons les cibles d'opinion dans les critiques de restaurants, puis nous déterminons la polarité de chaque cible, nos systèmes ont été classés parmi les premiers trois meilleurs systèmes dans toutes les sous-tâches. Nous avons également appliqué nos systèmes sur un corpus des critiques de livres français construit par l'équipe Open Edition pour extraire les cibles d'opinion et leurs polarités. / In this thesis, we address the problem of sentiment analysis. More specifically, we are interested in analyzing the sentiment expressed in social media texts such as tweets or customer reviews about restaurant, laptop, hotel or the scholarly book reviews written by experts. We focus on two main tasks: sentiment polarity detection in which we aim to determine the polarity (positive, negative or neutral) of a given text and the opinion target extraction in which we aim to extract the targets that the people tend to express their opinions towards them (e.g. for restaurant we may extract targets as food, pizza, service).Our main objective is constructing state-of-the-art systems which could do the two tasks. Therefore, we have proposed different supervised systems following three research directions: improving the system performance by term weighting, by enriching the document representation and by proposing a new model for sentiment classification. For evaluation purpose, we have participated at an International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation (SemEval), we have chosen two tasks: Sentiment analysis in twitter in which we determine the polarity of a tweet and Aspect-Based sentiment analysis in which we extract the opinion targets in restaurant reviews, then we determine the polarity of each target. Our systems have been among the first three best systems in all subtasks. We also applied our systems on a French book reviews corpus constructed by OpenEdition team for extracting the opinion targets and their polarities.