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Implicit Evaluation of Chess Knowledge in Non-Formal Learning Using Automatic Image Processing and Deep Learning

Author(s): Dan MUNTEANU,Nicoleta MUNTEANU / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2019

Non-formal education consists in the expression of personal interests through the voluntary participation of the young person in activities that are of interest or attract him directly in order either to spend free time in a constructive manner, or to develop personality or to grasp special talents in - an institutionalized framework. As a rule, non-formal education does not make literacy, but works on the student's apperceptive background (built up by formal education), strengthening the general knowledge of the young person in his / her areas of interest, along with the development of motivation, will, self-control and self-confidence. Our analysis had focused on tackling chess as a logical game in non-formal education by studying few groups of preschoolers who do not yet know how to read and write, in order to be able to record during the play their own moves on the game board. It has been noticed during the time that all these small age groups often commit mistakes, either on an involuntarily manner or deliberately, cheating for the purpose of winning at any cost, generating this way a controversy between opponents seeking the teacher's immediate support or assistance. One of the major limitations of the lesson is given by the fact that the teacher can't simultaneously watch the game on multiple chess boards in order to intervene in real time whenever his pedagogical assistance is needed. So, to alleviate these shortcomings, a system based on deep learning techniques is used that allows, based on image analysis, to detect the positioning of each chess piece on the game board. Upon completion of a move a button is pressed by each player at which point an image is taken with a camera and the new position of the pieces is determined and compared to the previous one, to detect if any of the game's rules have been violated. Then the notation of the move is recorded and in the case of a violation of the game's rules, the system produces a warning sound, giving this way to the teacher the opportunity to intervene promptly. The experiment consisted in recording the number of interventions necessary to correct the game first in a classic manner and then using the automated system, making this way a comparison between the two approaches. It has been noticed that using the automated system more errors could be detected in addition allowing an implied evaluation of the lesson in a manner which is more effective and objective then the classic one.

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The Integration of IoT Projects in Undergraduate Education

Author(s): Marin Oprea / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2019

The Internet of Things (IoT) is defined by the interconnection between networks of smart devices (objects) through specific communication standards and protocols. Data retrieved from these objects is loaded on cloud servers where it is analyzed, processed and then accessed by users through simple, intuitive, easy-to-use interfaces. The rapid development of IoT applications will steadily increase the demand for skilled personnel in this field. Under these circumstances, the study of IoT basic notions in classrooms becomes a necessity. Using the Arduino and Raspberry Pi development platforms, a wide range of IoT projects can be developed, according to the students' level. These platforms capture environmental data through an extended array of sensors (temperature, light, pressure, humidity, force, acceleration, rotation, sound, IR, magnetic field, etc.), making it perfectly suited to projects development in the educational STEM field (Science, Technology, Engineering and Matemathics). In this study my aim is to show, based on examples, how several IoT projects can be developed in class using the two above mentioned platforms and I emphasize the didactical aspects associated with this study. For the first project I used the Arduino Uno development board, the DHT11 temperature and humidity sensor, and ESP8266 WiFi module, and showed how the ambient temperature and humidity can be monitored via Internet. The data collected by the sensor was processed by Arduino, sent to the WiFi module and further on a cloud server on the IoT ThingSpeak platform where it was stored, analyzed and graphically represented in real time. In the second project I used a Raspberry Pi development board, a mobile robotic platform powered by two electric motors and equipped with a webcam in order to video monitor, via the Internet, a particular perimeter under observation. The robotic platform on which the surveillance camera is located can be positional controlled using a web browser that can access an HTML page built for this purpose. The final part of this study is dedicated to the assessment of the quality of STEM training results by classes of students who have worked on IoT projects compared with classes that have undergone traditional training courses.

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The Role of Disgust and Fear in the Educational Environment: Theoretical Aspects and Proposal of a Computerized Intervention

Author(s): Simona Alexandra Pascal,Cătălin Nedelcea,Ioana Podina / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2019

Disgust represents an important emotion in the maintenance of anxiety symptoms, especially in phobias, but it is disregarded in the assessment of symptoms, even if studies show that disgust could change their manifestation. So far, the main emotion studied in specific phobias is fear, which is almost always provoked, persistent, and accompanied by the avoidance of the phobic object. Children exposed to a frightening event are at risk to develop specific phobias. Once developed, it may be maintained by cognitive biases and can interfere with daily activities. In the light of these issues, the current research provides a summary of the relevant studies made on emotions in children and adolescents with anxiety symptoms and the main implications in educational environment. Relevant research made on both emotions emphasize that even if fear has a more essential role in anxiety disorders, disgust also has an impact on specific phobias reactions; these two emotions have different relative influence in phobias. The aim of this research is to propose a computerized intervention for managing emotions in adolescents. The intervention is based on virtual exposure to stimuli related to specific phobia described in DSM-5 (animals, injury, situational). It is a computerized version of exposure technique protocol and participants will be gradually exposed to those stimuli that increase the level of disgust and fear. Using this application for managing emotions, the intervention aims to increase adaptive behaviors that could be used by participants in phobic situations. Also, theoretical and practical implications in educational environment will be discussed.

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A Very Practical Approach for System Engineering Curriculum

Author(s): Mihail PASCU,Radu Nicolae Pietraru,Adriana Olteanu,Maximilian Nicolae / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2019

Practical applications in engineering higher education have a very important place. Unfortunately, the laboratory instrumentation required to implement practical applications has a high cost and is highly specialized (it can only be used for certain laboratory work). For this reason, there is a tendency for many hours of practical applications to be converted into theoretical seminar classes. Another reason that supports this trend is the much larger effort of training hours for practical applications and a greater need for support staff. Regardless of motivation, this trend has a major negative impact on the training of future engineers. The past few years have brought to the attention of teachers a series of low cost and multi-disciplinary hardware platforms such as Arduino, Raspberry Pi or NodeMCU. These platforms can be the basis for designing cheap and easy to use laboratory instruments and may be an alternative to classical laboratory instrumentation. The first advantage of this solution is to obtain a multi-disciplinary solution, a hardware platform that can be used to several disciplines. The second advantage is the possibility of acquiring the platform by the students due to the extremely low cost. In this way the practical training will not only be limited to laboratory hours. This article aims to outline a set of practical examples for several disciplines in the system engineering curriculum validating an inexpensive and multi-disciplinary laboratory instrumentation solution. The proposed hardware platform is based on the ESP8266 WiFi microprocessor and is specifically designed for this purpose. Through this article, the authors hope to convey an urge to a more practical approach in technical education in general and especially in the systems engineering field.

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Providing Semantically-Enabled Information for SmES knowledge workers: Multi-agent-based middleware

Author(s): Ramona Cristina POPA,Ionel-Bujorel Păvăloiu,Nicolae Goga / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2019

The objective of this research is to present a Multi-agent-based middleware that provides semantically-enabled information for SmES knowledge workers. The market currently offers several instruments for enabling knowledge management such as database management systems, data warehouse, intranet and extranet knowledge portals. However, these technological solutions do not take into account that knowledge management practices in small and medium companies are more congruous with apprenticeship-based learning rather than the formal training typical of big companies. This software is based on the European project E! 9770 PrEmISES and it helps small and medium enterprises to better exploit their information spaces. One central piece is the ontology component. In our days, ontologies are playing an important role. Many computer science domains, including software engineering, online learning, education and knowledge extraction are using ontologies in order to organize and share information in a semantic way. PrEmISES was the capability to couple with the existing data systems that are used by small and medium companies and in this way, to enhance them with a semantic layer/engine. The engine is used to find organizational documents within companies and make the searches more accurate by the use of ontologies. Premises is an improved software with educational purposes, based on the ubiquitous learning paradigm, that uses ontologies in order to find and organize relevant organizational documents, based on the employees work profile. In this way, employees can benefit of a fast-educational process (i.e. online learning) based on their individual work profiles. The engine is semantically enriched, meaning that it is searching for the specified words/query plus for semantically related concepts. In this paper we present PrEmISES architecture. We will present the main components and the main steps that were followed in order to develop the ontologies that were used for the ontology component.

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E-business Learning Tool for Online Banking Based on BPM (Business Process Management)

Author(s): Radu Rădescu,Tudor Ardelean / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2019

The purpose of this paper is to develop a learning application for the management of banking processes and related databases, which can be used to model the business processes specific to the educational field in finance and banking (e-banking). The application has a general character and can be used to implement any kind of business process in the online learning environment. As a motivation, the present work was born out of the need to improve the classical way of learning, by calling on the modeling and execution of e-banking specific processes through BPM. Thus, a structure that uses generic data types defining process-specific entities is a solution to improve how e-business processes are developed in order to make learning easier. In this respect, all processes modeled in an e-banking business learning platform have common structural components, while being differently parameterized according to each process. The technical analysis period is thus reduced, providing a permanent overview of existing processes. The structure designed accordingly is tested through a web application that connects to a database. The developed application is therefore a generic business process management learning tool, exemplified for e-banking processes, assumed by a case study: providing a bank credit to a client. The aim of the paper is to develop the most efficient software product for e-banking, thus generating a generic platform for assimilation of any type of process flow. The system architecture modularizes the entire project in four levels to ensure a clearest logical separation. In addition, three software development templates have been used to make the work of the developer easier and to make the learning product as efficient as possible. The business necessity of the present work is customized in the goal of fluidization and dynamism applied in solving any defined process. Thus, in the case study approached, the client applying for a credit goes through the necessary steps in a shorter time, and the cost of analyzing his/her file by the bank is smaller because it automates many portions of the whole process, the involvement of the human factor being importantly reduced. Hence, compared to the conventional version, the corresponding learning process is much simplified and easier to assimilate. The resulting learning application for banking-specific e-business processes is able to manage any type of processes and modify these processes through the developed BPMN interface. The original contributions of the paper are: theoretical and practical design of the e-business learning platform database, developing the web application in ASP.NET along with the related front-end technologies (HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, modeling and implementing as a case study the process of learning the flows of a banking process that highlights the concepts defined by the BPM methodology.

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Study Platform for Complex Data Analysis of Telecommunications and Social Network Applications Using Business Intelligence

Author(s): Radu Rădescu,Valentin MURARU / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2019

The present work involves the development of a learning model for the analysis of data from telecommunication and social networks for devices that make data sessions and voice calls, using Business Intelligence (BI) concepts and tools. The paper has a multi/interdisciplinary character, calling for e-learning, telecommunication, database, programming, IT applications and social/business networks. The applications developed for this purpose allow the analysis of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) by applying filters that make easier to understand the general problems of an application and identify network areas where possible degradation or shortcomings are observed. Business Intelligence analysis is predominantly conducted in the telecommunications field, but the same principles can be used in other areas, and the way of working can be adapted to serve as a strong starting point in any type of analysis for which information is available at the level of a database. It is defined a graphical interface by creating, where necessary, maps of geo-tagged data, filters, graphs, pivot tables, pie-charts, histograms, etc. across multiple display sheets, organized to contain the information specific to a particular analysis, thereby creating an analytical context in which the information required for use in the analysis is arranged adjacent, in the form of filters or graphs, the results being easier to interpret by introducing color coding formulas. Another important aspect is the low analysis time, due to the fact that the data automatically undergoes a transformation that initially had to be manually adapted. Automatic correlations that may go unnoticed, and there is also the ability to adapt and change over time. The paper contains detailed Business Intelligence complex analysis examples for the video player in social networks: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Data analysis by using a BI platform is useful when data sources are not directly correlated, allowing optimized visualization and identification of KPIs performance and metrics specifically defined for fast and efficient handling of data specific to mobile telecom operators and social networks or business networks. The analysis presented here could be easily expanded to any BI-based educational platform.

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Development and Validation of a Multimedia Instructional Package for Teaching Basic Electronic Devices at Upper Basic Education Level

Author(s): Mustapha Sumaila Sani,Bello Hassan / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2019

The study was conducted to develop and validate a multimedia electronic instructional package for teaching the Basic Electronic Devices component of Basic Technology at the Upper Basic Education level. It was a developmental research design, which involved the systematic study of designing, developing, and evaluating instructional programs, processes, and products that must meet criteria of internal consistency and effectiveness. Developmental research is particularly important in the field of instructional technology. The study therefore involved the analysis and description of the development process and the evaluation of the final product. The study was guided by the four research questions. The area for this is Kano state, North-Western Nigeria. Kano state lies within the Coordinates 110 30’N 80 30’E. The population for the study consists of 291 Basic Technology teachers, out of this, 10 Basic Technology teachers, 5 instructional technologist and 5 computer specialists were purposely selected for the evaluation of the package based on the three instruments for assessment. The findings of the study revealed that design procedures were followed in the development of the of Basic Electronic Devices Computer Instructional Package (BEDCIP); the BEDCIP have adequately covered the curriculum content of the subject matter; BEDCIP have met required instructional technology standards; and the BEDCIP have met the required technical standards. The study therefore recommends amongst others that Basic Technology teachers should be encouraged to prepare some aspects of their lessons in electronic form; the BEDCIP should be utilized for classroom instruction especially when teaching the Basic Electronic Devices component of Basic Technology; and that similar packages should be developed for the other aspects of Basic Technology curriculum.

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Applying Kolmogorov Complexity for High Load Balancing Between Distributed Computing System Nodes

Author(s): Maria Stepanova / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2019

Nowadays there is a huge growth of massive amount of data generated by different sources at real time or soft real time. Generally data is heterogeneous by its content and exists at every human sphere such as education, government, finance, medicine and so on. This paper is about the possibility to use the Kolmogorov complexity as a technological innovation in such area as education. The article describes fundamental issues such as data storage, data security and high speed access to data as one of the main parameters for successful using of eLearning platforms for education. It is considered comparisons of different eLearning platforms and its functional principles. Most eLearning platforms based on supercomputer and distributed computing systems, however, the growing volumes of data, especially in educational sphere, required other approaches of data storing and access. Nevertheless, educational platforms should be scalable and cross accessible. To increase data processing and storing efficiency it is considered data and operation partition idea among heterogeneous computational nodes which is the main infrastructure for eLearning platforms and methods. Kolmogorov complexity approach is investigated for such purposes. Furthermore, Kolmogorov complexity approach is examined for reduction a number of transmitting data between nodes. The possibility of using Kolmogorov complexity for optimal way of data dividing and processing in distributed and heterogeneous computing system and nodes without quantity nodes limitations is considered. The advantages and disadvantages of Kolmogorov complexity were considered applying to eLearning study aims. Experiments and results are given. The further plan investigation is described.

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Finding General Guidelines for Redesign of Learning Spaces

Author(s): Robin Støckert,Piet Van Der Zanden,Duncan PEBERDY / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2019

Higher Education is shifting from teacher-centred to student-centred practices. Such new practices ought to make today's students into active and cooperative learners and give them more relevant, real challenges and hands-on experiences. Furthemore, these learning scenarios should equip the student with the skills, competences and character qualities to thrive in a meaningful future job. Hence, the classroom or learning space should be able to resemble a real work environment with social interaction and different types of teamwork to handle complex problem solving. A holistic approach is needed to redesign and develop new learning spaces and to create new eco-systems for learning in order to handle more students than ever, attending higher education. Between 2000 and 2014, the number of students in higher education globally more than doubled to 207 million. One concrete approach is to start with the basic problem many Universities are facing today. Universities are in need of designs and definitions for lecture halls and classrooms that facilitate collaborative education practices next to informal study places. An easy way to transform current education space designs is by introducing new education buildings. However, many stakeholders have their part in the design process of learning spaces. Experiences and ideas are mixed-up in the understanding, communication, definition, usage, evaluation and (re-)design. This paper introduces three different approaches: 1) New campus plan for the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) 2) Cookbook Education Spaces from Delft University of Technology with prerequisite guidelines for architects and construction companies. 3) JISC's awareness campaign visiting universities with live examples of active learning spaces called The Sticky Campus.How can universities find common ground and understanding in the process of defining and redesigning learning spaces?

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Mobile Application and Wi-Fi Network Security for e-Learning Platforms

Author(s): George SUCIU,Muneeb Anwar,Cristiana Istrate / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2019

e-Learning embodies the use of electronic data along with information and communication technologies (ICT) in education. An e-Learning platform is a web-based software and represents an important tool for educators to create and manage courses on the web. However, due to the close relation of e-Learning with the Internet, such platforms are cyber-threatened and recent attacks have increasingly targeted platforms vulnerable to cryptojacking, a technique used for mining cryptocurrencies using the computing resources of devices from unsuspecting users. The number of educational web platforms has increased in the last years, and are now widespread in the mobile applications environment to reach a broad audience of users. The use of e-Learning mobile applications (m-Learning) enables employees to enrich their professional knowledge on their terms, whenever they want, by ensuring easy access to the learning material available on cloud platforms using any kind of Internet connection. The problem analyzed in the paper is related to the security of these m-Learning applications when connecting to public Wi-Fi network at a hotel or library, as an example of an unsecured network, while an office network is usually considered as secure. Our goal is to identify and mitigate the risks when users connect to a Wi-Fi public network, and also analyze how vulnerable devices are exposed to cybercriminals, as hackers can intercept communications between mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets using public Wi-Fi hotspots, namely a man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack. Furthermore, we evaluate several open source penetration testing tools which aid to the identification of vulnerabilities and propose proper security solutions for e-Learning platforms in the context of using public Wi-Fi networks.

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Strategic Technologies: Innovation in Higher Education in Romania

Author(s): Luiza-Maria TURLACU,Mihai C. Orzan,Raluca-Giorgiana Chivu,Tania Herrezeel / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2019

Technology is seen as an enabler for gaining new capabilities in universities. Nowadays, higher education institutions have seen how technology enhances the competitive advantage for not only the business environment but as well for their teachers and students. Innovation is mainstream and is creating opportunities to access and learn technologies that were not possible before. Universities should no longer be behind technology compared with other sectors. Although this is not yet explored, new technologies that as next-generation security, the blockchain, cloud, AI conversational interface, and digital credentials can be leverage from different industries. Innovative thinking on the basis of which institutions collaborate with various suppliers, distributors and customers to generate unique value easily replaces the traditional thinking that considers innovation as a property and marketing activity as a static show in one direction. Personalization is the key to offering quality services, and this is what disruptive technologies are offering. Universities have to focus on technologies that are appropriate for their strategy but at the same time to align with key market trends. Students are being more informed and empowered by personal devices that help and assist them in fulfilling their tasks and goals. Anticipating and meeting their needs and expectations suppose automating process and increasing digitization offering in universities. People and things are exchanging data at every moment. The barrier between the digital world and the physical world is crumbling which implies that higher education institutes need to be aligned with them for attracting and retaining students. The most significant technological opportunity for today's institution is to reduce total spend by targeted IT investments that are converted from fixed capital models to a variable cost operating models. Collaboration and co-creation are increasingly crucial for creating value for students and teachers."value" (including the age-old issue of cost optimization) but also higher levels of customer experience.

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Teaching Object Oriented Programming by Visual Devices

Author(s): József UDVAROS / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2019

At the beginning of the 21st century, it is unacceptable for students not to master the basics of algorithms during their secondary school studies, moreover, not to understand the basic concepts of programming and program development. This article and presentation present the necessary results of our two researches. In our first research, the level of IT knowledge has been measured at Hungarian secondary vocational schools in Slovakia, focusing mainly on the concepts of programming and OOP knowledge. Our survey focuses on how familiar students are with basic terms of OOP such as: class, object, object-oriented programming, method and inheritance. The results are rather disappointing. We did a research related to the IT skills of students. From the results of the survey, we determined which educational methods we should use for reaching better results. It was created a set of courses for teaching OOP using the recommended educational methods, as well as we did a literature research regarding teaching and visualizing OOP. While teaching we used a visual application developed by one from authors of this article. The aim of developing the software was to create a visual environment that easily and playfully introduces the key concepts of OOP programming. At the end of the courses we proved that the visual application greatly increases the efficiency of learning and understanding the concepts of programming. Furthermore, the students' problem solving ability can be developed by the introduction of the visual methods. The developed application and the introduced method help the practical training of programming, and the students' programming skills.

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Methods of Artificial Intelligence in Economical and Logistical Education

Author(s): József UDVAROS,Ákos GUBÁN,Miklós GUBÁN / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2019

The artificial intelligence, also soft computing is more and more relevant in practice and their mystification causes plenty of misunderstandings. There's a need in secondary schools as well as in non-technical/scientific higher education to introduce them in an understandable way for later use. So in our lecture and article we show the applicability of soft computing in an easy to use simulation. In today's computer science education environment deterministic algorithms play a large role, the students learn, understand and maybe even know how to implement them. It would be important to make solutions, techniques, which don't rely on traditional deterministic observations known and understandable to not only students that are interested in computer science. The best solution is to reach the results of certain searching tasks. Since in our BigData based world these techniques are the core of procedures, there's a huge importance for the high-level understanding of these techniques in secondary school. There's no need to know the functioning of the core. In the first step importance of optimization tasks need to be introduced and made understood, as well as their practical problems and relevance in real life. In the next step it should be shown, that if we make concessions in the purpose of optimization (we show this through an example that this is achievable) with the help of other, less mathematically correct, approaches we get really good results. In the article we show with great detail through a case study an optimization task, show its relevance then we introduce a simulation tool which's AI based. With the use of this tool we go through all possible solution ways, and compare how two differing AI based systems behave. After the applied simulations, we rate the results for the students/listeners and examine their importance. We also draft in short how to interpret the simulation results and what their efficiency means. We show as well what role running time, (speed) step number, number of parameters as well as practicable parameters play. The article shows how we can use this in education through a case study.

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The potential of City Information Modeling (CIM) in Understanding and Learning from the Impact of Urban Regulations on Residential Areas in Romania

Author(s): Teodora Ungureanu / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2019

Inspired by the video-games industry that simulated the design and development of fictive cities (e.g. the SIM City series), CIM - City Information Modeling, aims to create a platform that allows architects, planners and other specialists to collaborate on the study and design of city-wide projects. Similar to BIM - Building Information Modeling, CIM utilizes 3D modeling that goes beyond the traditional known CAD - computer aided design, capabilities in order to incorporate data and information that are specific to a city. In this way the actual form of the city is linked to the infrastructure, to the public services, to the people's mobility and interactions through the urban space and other aspects that are attributed to the urban life. The chaotic development of the new residential areas in Romania has been usually attributed to different social, economic or political factors. To fully understand the current urban form of the Romanian cities we must also look into the influence of urban regulations on the current development and anticipate how they will evolve. The aim of the study is to use CIM as a scientific and educational tool of understanding how urban regulations impact the residential areas through time. The focus will be on what can we learn from the simulation of a certain Romanian residential area and how changing the urban regulation impacts not only the urban form but also other aspects concerning the quality of life. Thus, the simulations will allow the parallel study of different urban regulations in a controlled environment.

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Visual Tool for Learning GPU Programming

Author(s): Alexandru Mihai Vulcan,Maximilian NICOLAIE,Radu Nicolae Pietraru / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2019

Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) are unanimously considered as powerful computational resources. General-purpose computing on GPU (GPGPU), as well, is the de facto infrastructure for most of the today computationally intensive problems that researchers all over the globe dill with. High Performance Computing (HPC) facilities use state of the art GPUs. Many domains like deep learning, machine learning, and computational finance uses GPU's for decreasing the execution time. GPUs are widely used in data centers for high performance computing where virtualization techniques are intended for optimizing the resource utilization (e.g. GPU cloud computing). The GPU programming model requires for all the data to be stored in a global memory before it is used. This limits the dimension of the problem a GPU can handle. A system utilizing a cluster of GPU would have a bigger level of parallelization but also would eliminate the memory limitation imposed by a single GPU. These being just a few of the problems a programmer needs to handle. However, the ratio between specialists that are able to efficiently program such processors and the rest of programmers is very small. One important reason for this situation is the steepness of the GPU programming learning curve due to the complex parallel architecture of the processor. Therefore, the tool presented in this article aims to provide visual support for a better understanding of the execution on GPU. With it, the programmers can easily observe the trace of the parallel execution on their own algorithm and, from that, they could determine the unused GPU capacity that could be better exploited.

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A System for Modelling and Visualizing Processor State During Code Execution

Author(s): Alexander Yermakov,Iurii STROGANOV / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2019

The main purpose of application is to simulate processor's behaviour during execution of some code. The user has a database of processors which he can modify by adding new processors or changing properties of existing ones. It means that the user can fill a database with either real-world units and examine their behaviour or try experimenting with properties in order to achieve different results not presented in any existing instances. Processors are defined as elements they are built from and elements' properties such as their count, bit depth, capacity and etc. Such definition can be quite accurate and mostly depends on how accurately processor's elements are described. However, not all aspects can be covered with such approach. For instance, there exists an algorithm which sole purpose is to balance requests between processor elements but the algorithm itself is quite tricky and is difficult to find, so it is not emulated in this app. The user chooses one of processors from database and inputs machine command sequence. The application runs each command one after another and simulates processor's behaviour according to current command: sets or clears bits, writes to or reads from registers, uses certain elements for computations and etc. All the activity is visualized at runtime which can be used for educational purposes in order to deeply understand what is going on when a curtain command or piece of code is executed. It may be crucial for those who are into assembler both getting started and having some experience as seeing how exactly commands effect current state of machine and what values they change not only helps to understand more thoroughly how assembler works but also makes it easier to debug code as it can be dreadful to do without visual assistance and scare beginners away. This also might be helpful for those who study system-level programming to visualize and have better understanding of how things like memory and processes management and inter-process communication work. Main elements of processor are displayed during visualization, as well as all data flow, values stored in registers and changes caused by current command execution. Moreover, statistics can be gathered and accessed at any time during or after execution. Statistics can be used either for profiling (understanding which elements are frequently used and which are not, balancing load between them) or for registering frequent command sequence patterns (can be useful in production of new processors as these sequences can be replaced with one command). Both visualization and statistics might help to understand why some algorithms are not very efficient and why some others are (e.g. recurrent and iterative ones) as it could be more intuitively obvious. The application is not designed to be used as a part of virtual machine but as a showcase of processors, their basic structure and operation. Above all else, application can be used by those who are experienced at coding for some specific platform and have to move to another one. Such situations can happen to those who code for microcontrollers. In these cases, education curve might become smoother as differences between platforms becomes vivid.

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An Object-Oriented Reasoner for Saturation of Logical Knowledge Bases

Author(s): Andrei Zamfira / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2019

In this paper is proposed an object-oriented reasoning system that is used to obtain the saturation of any type of logical knowledge base. A logical knowledge base is a triple (F,R,N) constituted from a set of facts, rules and negative constraints. The main objective is to implement an algorithm for derivation (i.e. a reasoner system) that works by successively applying the set of rules on the set of facts in order to derive new (implicit) knowledge from the explicitly stated ones and at the same time not to violate any negative constraints from the set N. This is known in logics as the Modus Ponens principle. The process continues until is obtained the saturation of the knowledge base, that is when new facts cannot be produced from the application of rules on the set of facts. The concrete implementation of the algorithm was done in Java. The knowledge base is comprised of sets of objects of classes in form of collections. The algorithm takes as input the sets of the knowledge base, (F,R,N) and produces as output the new (saturated) set of facts. In the process of matching the rules on the facts to derive conclusions, the algorithm relies on the backtracking algorithm in order to find all the possible solutions (i.e. all sets of facts that match the conjuncts of a rule) in an iterative, progressive and ordered manner. Experiments were made on three types of knowledge bases of various sizes: small, medium and large. Had been shown the computation times of the algorithm in each case in order to obtain its goals. Our backtracking-based solution has been compared with a more general one, who works by searching all possible combinations of facts that match a rule. Are shown the results of comparisons in graphical form for each of the 3 types of knowledge bases.

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Using the Activity Theory to Identify the Challenges of Designing Elearning Tools based on Machine Learning for Security Operations Centers

Author(s): Mihail CAZACU,Constanţa-Nicoleta Bodea,Maria-Iuliana Dascălu,Cristian CUCU / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2019

There is a fast-growing requirement for setting up Security Operation Centers (SOCs), with qualified personnel, mainly due to the increase of demands to protect ITC systems from security breaches, data disruption or unauthorized usage. The 2018 Report of Privacy Rights Clearinghouse mentions that over 8,000 data breaches were reported since 2005, with more than 10 billion records affected. And according to the 2017 study of IBM Security and Ponemon Institute, the average cost of a data breach exceeds 3.6 million US dollars. SOCs have the mission to run in this ”arms race” against cyber attackers (criminals, spies, terrorists, activists) and to be economically viable, as a profit or a cost center. Development of elearning tools for continuous enhancing of the professional competences of the SOC’s personnel is critical for the successful operation of SOCs. Recent studies have applied the framework of the Activity Theory in order to identify the conflicting priorities which need to be handled by different members of SOCs and have suggested ways to mitigate the risks. While automating mundane tasks is one solution, the issue of automating the automation process itself through Machine Learning, especially in the eLearning activities performed inside SOCs was not often addressed. The paper aims to present the challenges of applying the framework of the Activity Theory in designing eLearning tools based on machine learning methods for SOCs. Some well-established Open Source security tools and machine learning packages will be evaluated for their suitability for developing eLearning tools.

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A Quantitative Research for Determining the Medical User's Interest and Interact with E-Learning in the Medical Social Media System Targeted for the Iraqi Environment

Author(s): Sarmad Monadel Sabree Al-Gayar,Mohammed Safaa Mohamed Shubber / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2019

The use of cutting-edge technologies such as smartphones, smart bracelets, cloud computing, internet of things (IoT), e-Learning, and m-Health, as well as mobile applications has increased in healthcare sectors, due to factors such as low cost, ease of use, mobility, multiple uses, and being reliable. This encouraged international institutions, particularly health institutions, to increase their investment in healthcare technologies. We aim to develop a new specialized platform, an easy-to-use learning management system called Medical social media system, in order to improve the healthcare services in the Iraqi environment. It would be a social media system which can be used by users from their personal computer or Android devices in order to provide knowledge regarding users such as patients, medical students, new doctors and medical experts in the Iraqi health sector, where infrastructure needs to significantly develop, and medical information needs to be shared among medical workers as well as people in general. We present the quantitative research in this paper by collecting the data from a questionnaire, which are related to e-Learning and Medical social media system, so as to identify the main factors that impact the interest and the interaction of the medical specialists, new doctors, laboratory analysts, pharmacist, students of medical and biologic groups and patients interested in the health e-Learning and the cutting-edge health technologies through interactive Medical social media systems. Their interest and recommendations are taken into account while building an interactive specialized platform for medical social media system in the Iraqi environment.

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