Despite recent progress, computational visual aesthetic is still challenging. Image cropping, which refers to the removal of unwanted scene areas, is an important step to improve the aesthetic quality of an image. However, it is challenging to evaluate whether cropping leads to aesthetically pleasing results because the assessment is typically subjective. In this paper, we propose a novel casca...

Pervasive gaming is a genre of gaming systematically blurring and breaking the traditional boundaries of game. The limits of the magic circle are explored in spatial, temporal and social dimensions. These ways of expanding the game are not new, since many intentional and unintentional examples of similar expansions can be found from earlier games, but the recently emerged fashion of pervasive g...

Gamification has drawn the attention of academics, practitioners and business professionals in domains as diverse as education, information studies, human–computer interaction, and health. As yet, the term remains mired in diverse meanings and contradictory uses, while the concept faces division on its academic worth, underdeveloped theoretical foundations, and a dearth of standardized guidelin...

This paper uses ALIS data to compare academic performance in two subjects often viewed as relatively close substitutes for one another at A-level. The important role of GCSE achievement is confirmed for both subjects. There is evidence of strong gender effects and variation in outcomes across Examination Boards. A counterfactual exercise suggests that if the sample of Business Studies candidate...

We review the first iteration of an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) designed to engage middle school students in the interpretive process behind history and the mathematical roots of cryptography and cartography. Building from the core characteristic of ARGs as collaborative sense-making systems, we sought to integrate elements of effective cooperative learning environments, such as positive inter...

Time series data on cropping pattern at disaggregated level were analysed and its implications on geospatial drought assessment were demonstrated. An index of Cropping Pattern Dissimilarity (CP-DI) between a pair of years, developed in this study, proved that the cropping pattern of a year has a higher degree of similarity with that of recent past years only and tends to be dissimilar with long...

BACKGROUND Harnessing beneficial microbes presents a promising strategy to optimize plant growth and agricultural sustainability. Little is known to which extent and how specifically soil and plant microbiomes can be manipulated through different cropping practices. Here, we investigated soil and wheat root microbial communities in a cropping system experiment consisting of conventional and org...

let g be a graph with p vertices and q edges and a = {0, 1, 2, . . . , [q/2]}. a vertex labeling f : v (g) → a induces an edge labeling f∗ defined by f∗(uv) = f(u) + f(v) for all edges uv. for a ∈ a, let vf (a) be the number of vertices v with f(v) = a. a graph g is said to be vertex equitable if there exists a vertex labeling f such that for all a and b in a, |vf (a) − vf (b)| ≤ 1 and the in...

Soil biological quality can affect key soil functions that support food production and environmental quality. The objective of this study was to determine the effects of management and time on soil biological quality in contrasting dryland cropping systems at eight locations in the North American Great Plains. Alternative (ALT) cropping systems were characterized by greater cropping intensity (...

Multiple cropping systems provide more harvest security for farmers, allow for crop intensification and furthermore influence ground cover, soil erosion, albedo, soil chemical properties, pest infestation and the carbon sequestration potential. We identify the traditional sequential cropping systems in ten sub-Saharan African countries from a survey dataset of more than 8600 households. We find...