puzzles and problems meant to engage the attention of research mathematicians move them along to the harder stuff—complex analysis, algebraic geometry, interuniversal Teichmüller theory. As a recruiting tool this strategy has been highly successful. Many a mathematician credits Martin Gardner and his “Mathematical Games” column for inspiring a lifetime of mathematical inquiry. The Mathematics o...

How can social network sites (SNS) foster relationships when most status updates on SNS are mainly entertaining and not very intimate? This finding cannot be explained by classical social psychological theories such as social penetration theory which regard disclosure intimacy as the main driver of relational outcomes. By building on literature on the role of capitalization and humor in relatio...

Nowadays, the new paradigm demands digital textbooks which contain interactive contents. Our goal is to design the digital textbook providing effective multimedia and cutting interface for interactive education. To achieve this purpose, we propose the user friendly cutting interface and interactive animation for digital textbook. This interface complemented current digital textbook interface wh...

The challenges for scientific journals at the beginning of 21st century are exciting but beginning of 21st century are exciting but formidable. In addition to reporting faith-formidable. In addition to reporting faithfully new knowledge and new ideas, each fully new knowledge and new ideas, each journal, or at least all those aiming for a journal, or at least all those aiming for a general read...

Virtual humans (VHs) are used in many educational and entertainment settings: training and serious gaming, interactive information kiosks, tour guides, tutoring, interactive virtual dancers, and much more. Building a complete VH from scratch is a daunting task, and it makes sense to rely on existing platforms. However, when one builds a novel interactive VH application, one needs to be able to ...

In this paper we describe short mobile video story tests that have been done by using several authors/ users as story composers in the MoViE platform, which enables users to share, communicate and compose short mobile video stories in a networked community. The starting point of our study is the possibility to create an entertaining, dramaturgically intensive and coherent story from various sho...

Games can offer an entertaining alternative to repetitive tasks. In this paper, we propose the use of tangible interactive games for the repetitive training of upper limbs in the therapy of children with Cerebral Palsy (CP). We obtained promising results. The total of four created games succeeded in triggering all the to-be-trained movements properly and in a motivating and entertaining way. A ...

The project develops a Machinima animation promotional film for the Department of Computer Science at HeriotWatt University, and evaluates whether the promotional material is more engaging and entertaining than traditional materials; more informative about the provider (its values and facilities); promotes Computer Science as relevant to student lives; uses media immediately recognisable to the...

To many people, philosophy seems to be a difficult and daunting subject. Our research seeks to make the esoteric philosophical ideas and concepts more accessible to people in the modern world, and make philosophy learning an entertaining activity by allowing people to directly interact with virtual philosophers from the past. With Artificial Intelligence technology, we have created a virtual ph...

The German distance learning university uses the web-based collaborative learning platform CURE to support different collaborative learning scenarios, e.g. collaborative exercises or virtual seminars. During these scenarios students form learning groups upon teacher's request and collaborate on a common task. But as soon as the given tasks are accomplished, in most times the collaboration stagn...