Multitouch Experiment Instruction and Self-Regulation

In context of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), the range of experiments offered by the Schülerlabor NanoBioLab at Saarland University was expanded to include an experiment on the topic of water analysis, which provided the basis of the intervention. In addition to the analogue experiment instruction, there is a digital version which is presented as a Multitouch Experiment Instruction (MEI). MEIs are digitally enriched, interactive experiment instructions that accompany the cognitive learning process of pupils and promote competencies in the digital world (Seibert et al., 2020). In this study, we analysed whether the MEI could support self-regulated learning in an indirect support approach by considering different hierarchical levels of self-regulation in the design of the materials. The results show a significant acquisition of self-regulatory competences of learners in grades ten and eleven by using the MEI compared to the analogue version.

An Analogue Experiment on Pervious Concrete Subject to Dust Fall Blocking

Increased urbanization comes with increased traffic volume which gradually decrease the draining effect of porous asphalt concrete through porosity blocking. This study aims to discuss clogging as a result of dust or sand and the subsequent changes at the permeability function after rainfall. Four groups of pervious concrete mixtures were prepared. Aggregates were coarse and fine bottom ashes from the refuse incinerator. Prior to conducting the experiments, the permeability in the groups ranged from 1399.75 ~ 1412.91 ml/15sec. We adopted the 2011 average monthly dust fall in Pingtung County and magnified it by 10 and 20 times to simulate natural dust fall and clump dust fall on the pavement. Ruling out other factors, our results suggest that natural dust fall has little influence on the water permeability of pervious concrete. Water permeability was reduced sharply when the natural dust fall was increased 15 times. Moreover, it never surpassed the 400 ml/15sec minimum of the Japanese porous pavement technical indicator.

Autonomous Pattern Formation of Micro-organic Cell Density with Optical Interlink between Two Isolated Culture Dishes

Artificial linking of two isolated culture dishes is a fascinating means of investigating interactions among multiple groups of microbes or fungi. We examined artificial interaction between two isolated dishes containing Euglena cells, which are photophobic to strong blue light. The spatial distribution of swimming Euglena cells in two micro-aquariums in the dishes was evaluated as a set of new measures: the trace momentums (TMs). The blue light patterns next irradiated onto each dish were deduced from the set of TMs using digital or analogue feedback algorithms. In the digital feedback experiment, one of two different pattern-formation rules was imposed on each feedback system. The resultant cell distribution patterns satisfied the two rules with an and operation, showing that cooperative interaction was realized in the interlink feedback. In the analogue experiment, two dishes A and B were interlinked by a feedback algorithm that illuminated dish A (B) with blue light of intensity proportional to the cell distribution in dish B (A). In this case, a distribution pattern and its reverse were autonomously formed in the two dishes. The autonomous formation of a pair of reversal patterns reflects a type of habitat separation realized by competitive interaction through the interlink feedback. According to this study, interlink feedback between two or more separate culture dishes enables artificial interactions between isolated microbial groups, and autonomous cellular distribution patterns will be achieved by correlating various microbial species, despite environmental and spatial scale incompatibilities. The optical interlink feedback is also useful for enhancing the performance of Euglena-based soft biocomputing.

A Heuristic Algorithm for Solving Triangle Packing Problem

The research on the triangle packing problem has important theoretic significance, which has broad application prospects in material processing, network resource optimization, and so forth. Generally speaking, the orientation of the triangle should be limited in advance, since the triangle packing problem is NP-hard and has continuous properties. For example, the polygon is not allowed to rotate; then, the approximate solution can be obtained by optimization method. This paper studies the triangle packing problem by a new kind of method. Such concepts as angle region, corner-occupying action, corner-occupying strategy, and edge-conjoining strategy are presented in this paper. In addition, an edge-conjoining and corner-occupying algorithm is designed, which is to obtain an approximate solution. It is demonstrated that the proposed algorithm is highly efficient, and by the time complexity analysis and the analogue experiment result is found.