This study investigates four women’s use of typically male linguistic features in casual same-sex conversation. The aim of the study is to see whether and how this group of women use the linguistic features; swearing, interrupting, disagreeing and ignoring, questions and monologues (‘playing the expert’) which are all more common in male conversation and often part of a competitive communication style. I will also attempt to answer if these women’s linguistic behavior is typically female or male. The four women were tape recorded during a planned conversation in a casual setting and the recording was transcribed. The transcription was analyzed by using definitions of the linguistic features above made by, for example, Jennifer Coates (2004). The results show that these four women were neither typically female nor male, but a mix of the two; a hybrid.

The goal of primary science education is to foster children’s interest, develop positive science attitudes and promote science process skills development. Learning by playing and discovering provides several opportunities for children to inquiry and understand science based on the first–hand experience. The current research was conducted in the children’s laboratory in Heureka, the Finnish science centre. Young children (aged 7 years) which came from 4 international schools did a set of chemistry experiments in the laboratory. From the results of the cognitive test, the pre-test, the post-test, supported by observation and interview, we could make the conclusion that children enjoyed studying in the laboratory. Chemistry science was interesting and fascinating for young children; no major gender differences were found between boys and girls learning in the science laboratory. Lab work not only encouraged children to explore and investigate science, but also stimulated children’s cognitive development.

To adolescents, online game provides a rich playground for developing competence in leadership, coordination, teamwork, and cooperation. Adopting the perspective of positive psychology and social cognitive theory, this research investigates how factors such as personal and social factors may impact adolescents' learning outcomes and subjective will-being. The results show that game efficacy, adolescents' game attitudes, and social influences are important factors that influence adolescents' online game behavior. Moreover, playing online games may improve adolescents' psychological affects and learning, which in turn enhance players' subjective well-being. These results provide a new perspective to game researchers, teachers and parents and can help game manufactures and government in designing games and making policies.

Abstract Men and women are born in equal according to our constitution. The right of work for people shall be protected, and basic human rights for men and women are equal according to International Labor Code. However, basing on varied factors, currently the work relationship between men and women is not ideal. Subject to the data statistical records from Directorate-General of Budgets, Account & Statistics, Executive Yuan, the rate share for women manager and administrator in private organizations is only 13.6%. Even in the governmental organization, chief director selected by people and recommended women officials is also only 11.89%. The wage for women in Taiwan is always shared 73% of the men¡¦s. In the environment of practical situation, women are often restricted and affected by social structure, traditional culture value, and dull role-playing. On the other hand, they are often restrained and interfered by acting for different family roles. Those factors bring much pressure for women and their careers are greatly influenced. The researcher of this study is to serve in the governmental organization now. In so many years of working experience, she realizes deeply about the difficulties, obstacle, and decision for women unable to self-implement for achievement in the process of development under old social culture value. As viewing that women play important role gradually for national labor application in the future, and following the upgrade educational standard for women, the rate share for officials in governmental organization is increased year by year. Therefore, through pioneer model of female officials in the administrative organization, who are unable to reach for an equal treatment, this study is to research on personal disposition, sex role-playing, and pressure on role-playing, etc. factors. The successful result of personal presentation on how to overcome the obstacles and which kind of career policies adopted in the process of development are studied. In this study adopts individual interview, and the objects under this visiting are to serve in the administrative organization, including 4 higher/intermediate division women qualified by our national high-class examination, and aged from 35 to 50 years old to have more than 4 years of service span. The information collected is written by words, and after text classification and management, we build a title specified with explanation. Under comparison and analysis, the words told by the object will be directly narrated to prove our points of this study. Finally, the results are concluded below: ¤@¡BIn the aspect on sex role-playing ¡]¤@¡^Traditional social value affected to attitude for sex role-playing: in the traditional social value, women must take most of the duties to the household affairs and child raising. Even the modern women who have career feel guilty on care less for family members resulting from over devoted themselves to the work. ¡]¤G¡^Choosing stable work for themselves under assessment: except being affected by school domain, colleague, or models, etc. women look for stable work to let them can take care of family members and work simultaneously. ¡]¤T¡^Dull sex role-playing affected to their career development: for the factors of family role-playing, discrimination on sex for career and promotion, and not suitable for management, etc., women are restricted for career development. ¡]¥|¡^Sex role-playing and personal disposition affected to their career development: Most of the female officials in the administrative organization are trend to have personal disposition on both men and women with flexible space to meet the demand of actual condition. Women who have such kind of disposition are successful on career development. ¤G¡BIn the aspect of role conflicts ¡]¤@¡^Traditional social value affected to their role conflicts and career progress. ¡]¤G¡^Lower the role conflict, positive influence on career development. ¤T¡BIn the aspect of personal disposition ¡]¤@¡^Women with disposition of inner self-control get higher successful on career: As women who have inner self-control dare to receive challenge and take responsibility for better achievement. Therefore, they have high rate for successful on career. ¡]¤G¡^Smaller influenced by traditional culture value, they have higher motive to achieve the successful. Besides, the rate is higher to act as senior officials in the intermediate and higher division. ¥|¡BSuccessful policy factors for women career ¡]¤@¡^Looking for support and assistance from their family members: Looking for effective support system to cope with pressure, their career will be successful without burdens. ¡]¤G¡^Creating opportunity for competition priority: like to use the policies with ¡§organizational level and structure opportunity¡¨ ¡§increasing on training opportunity¡¨, ¡§striving for professional enrichment and in-service study opportunity¡¨, ¡§assessment on situation priority¡¨, and ¡§letting resistance turn into assistance¡¨, etc. to breakthrough for greater progress on career. ¡]¤T¡^Devoted themselves to the work with great efforts: being fully devoted to the work with progressive attitude and good faith, and this is the basic policy to win for a success. ¡]¥|¡^Having the opinion same as senior officers: Good coordination with senior officers, and appropriate application of the policy to avoid creating negative influence. ¡]¤­¡^Self-selling at appropriate time: self recommendation policy. ¡]¤»¡^Seeking for instruction from good instructor: A good instructor can appreciate your talent and will give instruction to you at appropriate time, and a timing recommendation as well as promotion helps greatly to the development of career without obstacles. ¡]¤C¡^Establishing the human network relations: Participating progressively and actively to expand human relations and set-up good information network. By means of the operation on human network, the development of career will be successful more easily. Key words: Sex role-playing, role conflict, personal disposition, career development, career development policy, men and women to work equal

This thesis establishes a theoretical framework for understanding virtual spaces and roleplaying in relation to Ian Bogost's theory of "procedural rhetoric," the art of persuading through rule systems alone. Bogost characterizes the persuasive power of games as setting up an Aristotelian enthymeme--an incomplete argument--that one completes through play; however, I argue that the dominant rhetoric intended by a team of game designers is subject to manipulation through player choice. Discrete structures within the play experience cause the meaning-making possibilities of a game object to pullulate in a number of directions. Procedural rhetoric is not comprehended or created when reflected back upon after play: we interrogate it, piece it together, and change it through play. If rules are how the designers express themselves through videogames, then the player expresses herself by forming a personal ruleset--a modus operandi or ethical system--in response to the dominant rhetoric. Furthermore, game space is not merely the place where this dialectic occurs; it also embodies a ruleset in the way it organizes objects and directs the flow of play. The thesis proposes a model by which games, which are "half-real" according to theorist Jesper Juul, can be judged intersubjectively--that is, in a way that accounts for the objectivity of their rulesets and the subjectivity of player experience. By fully understanding the dynamic between the three procedural influences of rules, space, and identity, we can learn more about designing persuasive game systems and enhance the possibilities of subversive play.

Computer games are an increasingly popular application for Artificial Intelligence (AI) research, and conversely AI is an increasingly popular selling point for commercial digital games. AI for non playing characters (NPC) in computer games tends to come from people with computing skills well beyond the average user. The prime reason behind the lack of involvement of novice users in creating AI behaviors for NPC's in computer games is that construction of high quality AI behaviors is a hard problem. There are two reasons for it. First, creating a set of AI behavior requires specialized skills in design and programming. The nature of the process restricts it to certain individuals who have a certain expertise in this area. There is little understanding of how the behavior authoring process can be simplified with easy-to-use authoring environments so that novice users (without programming and design experience) can carry out the behavior authoring task. Second, the constructed AI behaviors have problems and bugs in them which cause a break in player expe- rience when the problematic behaviors repeatedly fail. It is harder for novice users to identify, modify and correct problems with the authored behavior sets as they do not have the necessary debugging and design experience. The two issues give rise to a couple of interesting questions that need to be investigated: a) How can the AI behavior construction process be simplified so that a novice user (without program- ming and design experience) can easily conduct the authoring activity and b) How can the novice users be supported to help them identify and correct problems with the authored behavior sets? In this thesis, I explore the issues related to the problems highlighted and propose a solution to them within an application domain, named Second Mind(SM). In SM novice users who do not have expertise in computer programming employ an authoring interface to design behaviors for intelligent virtual characters performing a service in a virtual world. These services range from shopkeepers to museum hosts. The constructed behaviors are further repaired using an AI based approach. To evaluate the construction and repair approach, we conduct experiments with human subjects. Based on developing and evaluating the solution, I claim that a design solution with behavior timeline based interaction design approach for behavior construction supported by an understandable vocabulary and reduced feature representation for- malism enables novice users to author AI behaviors in an easy and understandable manner for NPCs performing a service in a virtual world. I further claim that an introspective reasoning approach based on comparison of successful and unsuccessful execution traces can be used as a means to successfully identify breaks in player ex- perience and modify the failures to improve the experience of the player interacting with NPCs performing a service in a virtual world. The work contributes in the following three ways by providing: 1) a novel introspective reasoning approach for successfully detecting and repairing failures in AI behaviors for NPCs performing a service in a virtual world.; 2) a novice user understandable authoring environment to help them create AI behaviors for NPCs performing a service in a virtual world in an easy and understandable manner; and 3) Design, debugging and testing scaffolding to help novice users modify their authored AI behaviors and achieve higher quality modified AI behaviors compared to their original unmodified behaviors.

Didelio meistriškumo golfo žaidėjų varžybinės veiklos ir fiziologinių poreikių ypatumai sąlygoja ne tik tokio meistriškumo golfo žaidėjų treniravimo modelius, bet ir sudaro galimybes modeliuoti jaunųjų golfo žaidėjų daugiametį rengimą. Nors rengiant jaunuosius golfo žaidėjus taikomos skirtingos žaidimo sąlygos (nešant, traukiant golfo krepšį ir važiuojant golfo mašinėle), tačiau jų poveikis žaidimo kokybei, judėjimo charakteriui ir funkciniam pajėgumui nėra apibrėžtas. Aktuali problema – kokie yra jaunųjų golfo žaidėjų varžybinės veiklos struktūros, lokomocinių ir fiziologinių poreikių ypatumai žaidžiant skirtingomis sąlygomis? Tyrimo objektas – jaunųjų golfo žaidėjų varžybinė veikla ir funkcinis pajėgumas. Tyrimo hipotezė – sunkėjant žaidimo sąlygoms didėja jaunųjų golfo žaidėjų fiziologiniai poreikiai ir kartu blogėja varžybinės veiklos rodikliai. Sunkėjančios žaidimo sąlygos sudaro galimybes gerinti jaunųjų golfo žaidėjų aerobines galias. Tyrimo tikslas – nustatyti ir įvertinti jaunųjų golfo žaidėjų varžybinės veiklos struktūros, lokomocinių ir fiziologinių poreikių ypatumus žaidžiant skirtingomis sąlygomis. Tyrimo uždaviniai: 1. Nustatyti jaunųjų golfo žaidėjų varžybinės veiklos struktūros, lokomocinių ir fiziologinių poreikių rodiklius žaidžiant skirtingomis sąlygomis. 2. Nustatyti ir įvertinti didesnio ir mažesnio meistriškumo jaunųjų golfo žaidėjų varžybinės veiklos struktūros, lokomocinių ir fiziologinių poreikių ypatumus. 3. Nustatyti ir įvertinti jaunųjų golfo... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Sport performance indicators and physiological demands of elite golfers are fundamental factors, when youth golfers and their trainers compose training programs (models). Youth golfers practise and play under three different conditions (carrying golf bag, pulling golf bag and using golf power cart), but it is not known what influence these different conditions have on youth golfers’ peculiarities of their sport performance and physiological demands. The problem of the research: what are the peculiarities of the profile (structure) of sport performance and physiological demands in youth golfers? The object of the research was sport performance and physiological demands in selected youth golfers. The hypothesis of the research: youth golfers’ physiological demands will be higher, but sport performance indicators will be worse under more strenuous conditions. Training effect on youth golfers’ aerobic fitness will be higher under more strenuous conditions. The aim of the research was to determine and assess the peculiarities of sport performance and physiological demands in selected youth golfers under three different conditions. Objectives of the research: 1. To determine the sport performance and physiologicl demands indicators in selected youth golfers under three different conditions. 2. To determine and assess the sport performance and physiological demands peculiarities of different skills in selected youth golfers under three different conditions. 3. To determine and... [to full text]

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This dissertation concerns live action role-playing (larp). Larp may be described as improvised theater without an audience, as participants simultaneously embody both audience and actor in their constant interaction with one another.  Hence, larp can be seen as a participatory culture.  The study is based on participant observation, interviews and online ethnography in Denmark, Latvia, Sweden and Norway. The aim of the thesis is to analyze how bodies materialize, take and are given space in larps. At the heart of the study lie questions on how processes of embodiment are enacted before, during and after the game. Two central concepts - larp chronotope and matrix of interpretation – shape the analysis. The first denotes the specific timespace in which a larp takes place, e.g a Soviet military camp or a fantasy world. The second concept stands for a general matrix of norms that informs participants on how to enact their characters in the larp chronotope. The thesis shows that participants strive to act in ways that are intelligible according to the matrix of interpretation that reigns during the game days. In addition, although game and everyday matrixes of interpretations are always inseparable, while attending a larp the participant’s ordinary lives are temporarily allowed to fade into the background. Thus, larps are complex combinations of objects, spaces and bodies that are given new relations and new meanings. Furthermore, the thesis shows that larp embodiment is conditioned by normative ideas of what it means to be an intelligible live action role player. White male bodies are more likely to access the sphere of larp intelligibility than others, which is evident in many of the stories and made up worlds portrayed in the study. Yet, the collaborative narration of game worlds that take place before larps can include all sorts of bodies. Consequently, larps provide an opportunity for alternative forms of embodiment and experiences.