Academic literature on the topic 'Board game cafe'

This study aims to determine the effect of store atmosphere, product quality, price perception, and lifestyle on purchasing decisions at Euphoria Café Karanganyar. The type of research used is quantitative research with survey methods conducted on visitors to Euphoria Café Karanganyar. The results of the analysis using multiple regression analysis are store atmosphere, product quality, lifestyle have a significant effect on purchasing decisions at Euphoria Karanganyar, while price perceptions have no significant effect on purchasing decisions at Euphoria Café Karanganyar. Suggestions in this study are referring to the store atmosphere variable at Euphoria Karanganyar, further improving the attractive decorations and seating layouts on the first and second floors which are not only able to accommodate a large number of visitors but also add comfort when they visit. Referring to lifestyle variables, hanging out activities for visitors can become one of the lifestyles that are carried out, Euphoria Café Karanganyar can add game facilities that are not yet available such as board games, jenga, uno cards and others to attract more visitors to come to the cafe. . Referring to the product quality variable, especially with regard to the menus served, the café can add new products from food and beverages. Referring to the price perception variable, Euphoria Karanganyar must review the prices at the cafe and restaurant which are set periodically while taking into account the level of competition. Keywords: Store Atmosphere, Product Quality, Price Perception, Lifestyle, and Purchase Decision

Di tengah masyarakat, saat ini perkembangan bisnis di Indonesia cukup terbilang sangat pesat khususnya bidang kuliner. Potensi bisnis kuliner dapat dilakukan di pasar tradisional, pinggir jalan hingga restoran modern. Selain dapat dilakukan secara konvensional, bisnis kuliner ini dapat dijalankan dengan memanfaatkan kemajuan teknologi yang semakin pesat yaitu digital. Melalui digital marketing, pembisnis dapat mempromosikan produknya mengingat penggunaan digitalisasi dapat menghemat bisnis, baik dari segi promosi (pemasaran produk) maupun biaya yang akan dikeluarkan. Meski begitu, banyak masyarakat Indonesia khususnya para pelaku UMKM, yang masih kurang pemahaman mengenai digitalisasi dan potensi media sosial sebagai sarana promosi. Akan tetapi, tidak sedikit pelaku UMKM yang sudah melakukan promosi melalui digital, namun ide ataupun konten promosi yang terapkan masih kurang, sehingga promosi yang dilakukan tidak mencapai target yang diharapkan oleh pelaku usaha UMKM itu sendiri. Salah satu UMKM tersebut adalah Board Games Cafe yang terletak di Jalan Permata Baloi Ruko Permata Niaga Regency Blok AA Nomor 6-8, Kota Batam. Melalui hasil rancangan strategi promosi yang telah dibuat kepada pemilik usaha Board Games, maka penerapan straregi digital marketing yang dijalankan berupa direct marketing melalui sosial media khususnya Instagram telah berjalan dengan lancar dan membantu pemilik usaha dalam mengatasi permasalahan yang dihadapi

IntroductionThe prevalence of sexually transmitted infections in imprisoned women is high. In the prison school context, education in health is one of the best strategies to achieve positive indicators in terms of health promotion and disease prevention. The use of educational technologies, such as board games, can aid in the process of knowledge acquisition on a given subject matter. This article describes the protocol of a health educational intervention that addresses content about sexually transmitted infections directed to imprisoned women in a prison school.Methods and analysisA quasi-experimental study to test the effect of a board game on 64 imprisoned women’s level of knowledge about sexually transmitted infections. The Previna board game was specifically created and validated for these women. The primary outcome will be the level of knowledge on sexually transmitted infections, measured using a score obtained after the assessment conducted during the initial interview, immediately after the intervention and after 15 days.Ethics and disclosureThis study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Federal University of Pernambuco (Opinion No. 3 986 050 and CAAE: 30035520.7.0000.5208). The results will be presented to the school and to the Federal University of Pernambuco, as part of the activities of a PhD Thesis in Nursing, and will be disclosed in peer-reviewed journals and scientific events.Trial registration numberRBR-2JWS7DV.

Abstract. Nowadays, people in most parts of the world always visit, travel and have fun in their cities or other cities, and they spend considerable time and money in their city or in other cities as a tourist. The existence of an intelligent and automated system that can provide the most suitable recreational and cultural offerings at any time and place, with regard to financial capability and time and transport constraints, as well as individual interests and personalization; has always been felt. Recommender systems can be used to suggest suitable recreational options for the user. The main difference between the recommendation model in this study and the previous models is to focus on the short-term planning of a few hours for one day. Previous models were often based on planning a few days a week or days of the month. Also, the cost factor has been considered in this research, which has been less considered in previous models. We used collaborative filtering based on logistic regression to predict whether a type of places is a proper proposition to a user or not. Our case study is about recommending the board game cafés in the city of Kerman, Iran and the result shows that mixed groups between 15 to 30 years old are the best target and our model can predict if board game café is a good suggestion to different users. We used correlation based recommender systems when board game cafes are a proper suggestion for a user and there are at least two options for the user. In case there is no information about the user and his previous rating, popularity based recommender system can be useful. We also used content based recommender systems to give recommendations by having some background information about previous itineraries of a user and his rating to those.

Media pembelajaran merupakan salah satu komponen belajar yang sangat diperlukan saat melaksanakan pembelajaran, demi menunjang suatu tujuan pemebelajaran. Pemanfaatan media pembelajaran seharusnya menjadi bagian yang sangat diperhatikan oleh seorang pendidik sebagai fasilitator kegiatan pembelajaran. Tujuan penelitian Mengembangkan media pembelajaran board game ular tangga pada materi metamorphosis kupu-kupu tema 3 subtema 2 di kelas IV yang valid. Model pembelajaran yang digunakan peneliti yaitu model ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development Implementasi, dan Evaluation). Penelitian yang dilakukan peneliti yang membatasi tahap model ADDIE sampai tahap ke-3 yaitu development karena sekarang masih masa pandemic covid-19. Teknik dan instrumen pengumpulan data yang digunakan pada penelitian adalah dokumentasi dan lembar validasi dari ahli media dan ahli materi. Teknik analisis data yang digunakan pada penelitian ini adalah teknik analisis data kuantitatif dan analisis data kualitatif. Hasil validasi oleh media memperoleh nilai sebesar 97,5% dengan kategori sangat valid sedangkan validasi oleh ahli materi memperoleh nilai sebesar 95,29% dengan kategori sangat valid. Maka dapat disimpulkan bahwa media pembelajaran board game valid untuk digunakan pada pembelajaran materi metamorfosis kupu-kupu tema 3 subtema 2 kelas IV.

Chess is a board game, in the Middle Ages referred to as a tabula. During the long way it took since its origin in India in the 6th century until modern times, the subsequent communities left their own, inimitable cultural marks. In India, chess had a deeply mystical nature; Persians used chess to picture the world as a battlefield; Arabs systematised many concepts and took note of the mathematical aspect; Europe made use of chess to define rules that should apply to an ideal society. This shows a perfect understanding of the balance on the chessboard, the mutual dependencies and consistent actions leading to success – both when playing and creating social life. Medieval literature provides an excellent basis for studies of the intertwining cultural trends and describing the reality. In the literature, elements based on playing chess are oftentimes among the postulated modes of education. However, the ideas encountered by the potential users of chess tournaments were best communicated by the figures and the accumulated plethora of notions. An analysis of the changes affecting jackstraws at an early stage of the game’s adaptation in Europe and other territories which took over chess as cultural models, leads to a conclusion that the material from the 11th-12th centuries that comes from Polish collections matches many Latin trends and shows considerable knowledge thereof.

GENIUS MAKERS: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World by Cade Metz. New York: Dutton, 2021. 371 pages including notes, references, and index. Hardcover; $28.00. ISBN: 9781524742676. *As Cade Metz says in the acknowledgments section, this is a book "not about the technology [of AI] but about the people building it ... I was lucky that the people I wanted to write about were so interesting and so eloquent and so completely different from one [an]other" (p. 314). *And, that's what this book is about. It is about people such as Geoff Hinton, founder of DNNresearch, who, once he reached his late fifties, never sat down because of his bad back. It is about others who came after him, including Yann LeCun, Ian Goodfellow, Andrew Ng, Yoshua Bengio, Jeff Dean, Jürgen Schmidhuber, Li Deng, Ilya Sutskever, Alex Krizhevsky, Demis Hassabis, and Shane Legg, each of whom had their strengths, weaknesses, and quirks. *The book also follows the development of interest in AI by companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, DeepMind, and OpenAI. DeepMind is perhaps the least known of these. It is the company, led by Demis Hassabis, that first made headlines by training a neural network to play old Atari games such as Space Invaders, Pong, and Breakout, using a new technique called reinforcement learning. It attracted a lot of attention from investors such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Google's Larry Page. *While most companies were interested in the application of AI to improve their products, DeepMind's goal was AGI, "Artificial General Intelligence"--technology that could do anything the human brain could do, only better. DeepMind was also the first company to take a stand on two issues: if the company was bought out (which it was, by Google), (1) their technology would not be used for military purposes, and (2) an independent ethics board would oversee the use of DeepMind's AGI technology, whenever that would arrive (p. 116). *Part One of the book, "A New Kind of Machine," follows the early players in the field as they navigate the early "AI winters," experiment with various new algorithms and technologies, and have breakthroughs and disappointments. From the beginning, there were clashes between personalities, collaboration and competition, and promises kept and broken. *Part Two of the book, titled "Who Owns Intelligence?," explores how many of the people named above were wooed by the different companies, and moved back and forth between them, sometimes working together and sometimes competing with each other. The companies understood the power of neural networks and deep learning, but they could not develop the technologies without the direction of the leading researchers, who were in limited supply. To woo the best researchers, the companies competed to develop exciting and show-stopping technology, such as self-driving cars and an AI to play (and beat) the best in Chess and Go. *In Part Three, "Turmoil," the author explores how the players began to realize the shortcomings and potentially dangerous effects of the AI systems. AI systems were becoming more and more capable in a variety of tasks. "Deep fakes" of celebrities and the auto-generation of fake news (often on Facebook) led many to question the direction AI was going. Ian Goodfellow said, "There's a lot of other areas where AI is opening doors that we've never opened before. And we don't really know what's on the other side" (p. 211). One surprising figure taking a stand on the side of caution was Elon Musk, giving repeated warnings of the possible rise of superintelligent actors. Further, it was discovered that the Chinese government was already using AI to do facial recognition and track its citizens as they moved about. *Other concerns dampened the community: it was discovered that small and unexpected flaws in training could have significant effects on the ability of an AI system to do its job. For example, "by slapping a few Post-it notes on a stop sign, [researchers] could fool a car into thinking it wasn't there" (p. 212). *Additionally, the biases in training data were being exposed, leading some to believe that AI systems would not equally benefit minority groups, and could even discriminate against them. Furthermore, Google was being approached by the US government to assist in the development of programs which could be used in warfare. Finally, Facebook was struggling to contain fake news and finding that even AIs could not effectively be used to combat it. *In the final sections of the book, the author explores the AI researchers' attitudes toward the future and the big questions. Will AI systems be able to eventually take over all work, even physical labor? Can the AI juggernaut be controlled and directed? Will AGI be fully realized? *This last question is explored in the chapter titled "Religion." "Belief in AGI required a leap of faith. But it drove some researchers forward in a very real way. It was something like a religion," said roboticist Sergey Levine (p. 290). The question of the feasibility of AGI continues to generate much debate, with one camp claiming that it is inevitable, while the other camp insisting that AI systems will excel only in limited tasks and environments. *As a Christian, I found the debates about the proper role of AI to be intriguing. Is the development of AGI inevitable? Should we as Christians petition companies and governments to have debates on the pursuit of AGI? Should we enact laws to limit or prohibit the use of AI in warfare? Should independent evaluators be required to review AI systems regarding discrimination? Should Christians participate in the further development of AGI? *Learning the histories and attitudes of the leading individuals in the development of AI also intrigued me. Many of the individuals seem to have very little concern for the potentially negative impact of their work. Their only motivation seems to be fame and fortune. It makes me wonder if the field of computer science should require all its practitioners to take ethics training like professional engineers are required to do. This book certainly confirms the importance of ethics in the field of computer science and the need for its practitioners to be people of virtue. *In summary, this was a different kind of book from many others in the field of technology. It was fascinating that so much of what I was reading about had happened in just the last ten years. Hearing the anecdotes of back-office meetings, public outcries, and false claims was intriguing. If you, like me, wonder how we got to where we are today in the area of AI, this is the book for you. *Reviewed by Victor T. Norman, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Calvin University, Grand Rapids, MI 49546.

“Language is inseparable from the world that provokes it”-- Don DeLillo, “In the Ruins of the Future”The attacks of 9/11 generated a public discourse of suspicion, with Osama bin Laden occupying the role of the quintessential “most wanted” for nearly a decade, before being captured and killed in May 2011. In the novel, Falling Man (DeLillo), set shortly after the attacks of September 11, Justin, the protagonist’s son, and his friends, the two Siblings, spend much of their time at the window of the Siblings’ New York apartment, “searching the skies for Bill Lawton” (74). Mishearing bin Laden’s name on the news, Robert, the younger of the Siblings, has “never adjusted his original sense of what he was hearing” (73), and so the “myth of Bill Lawton” (74) is created. In this paper, I draw on postclassical, cognitive narratology to “defamiliarise” processes undertaken by both narrator and reader (Palmer 28) in order to explore how narrative elements impact on readers’ and characters’ perceptions of the terrorist. My focus on select episodes within the novel “pursue[s] the author’s means of controlling his reader” (Booth i), and I refer to a generic reader to identify a certain intuitive reaction to the text. Assuming that “the written text imposes certain limits on its unwritten implications” (Iser 281), I trace a path from the uttered or printed word, through the reading act, to the process of meaning-making. I demonstrate how renaming the terrorist, and other language games, challenge the notion that terror can be synonymous with a locatable, destructible source by activating a suspicion towards the text in particular, and towards language in general.Falling Man tells the story of Keith who, after surviving the attacks on the World Trade Centre, shows up injured and disoriented at the apartment of his estranged wife, Lianne, and their son, Justin. The narrative, set at different periods between the day of the attacks and three years later, focuses on Keith’s and Lianne’s lives as they attempt to deal, in their own ways, with the trauma of the attacks and with the unexpected reunion of their small family. Keith disappears into games of poker and has a brief relationship with another survivor, while Lianne searches for answers in the writings of Alzheimer sufferers, in places of worship, and in conversations with her mother, Nina, and her mother’s partner, Martin, a German art-dealer with a questionable past. Each of the novel’s three parts also contains a short narrative from the perspective of Hammad, a fictional terrorist, starting with his early days in a European cell under the leadership of the real terrorist, Mohamed Atta, through the group’s activities in Florida, to his final moments aboard the plane that crashes into the World Trade Centre. DeLillo’s work is noted for treating language as central to society and culture (Weinstein). In this personalised narrative of post-9/11, DeLillo’s choices reflect his “refusal to reproduce the mass media’s representations of 9/11 the reader is used to” (Grossinger 85). This refusal is manifest not so much in an absence of well-known, mediated images or concepts, but in the reshaping and re-presenting of these images so that they appear unexpected, new, and personal (Apitzch). A notable example of such re-presentation is the Falling Man of the title, who is introduced, surprisingly, not as the man depicted in the famous photograph by Richard Drew (Leps), but a performance artist who uses the name Falling Man when staging his falls from various New York buildings. Not until the final two sentences of the novel does DeLillo fully admit the image into the narrative, and even then only as Keith’s private vision from the Tower: “Then he saw a shirt come down out of the sky. He walked and saw it fall, arms waving like nothing in this life” (246). The bin Laden/Bill Lawton substitution shows a similar rejection of recycled concepts and enables a renewed perspective towards the idea of bin Laden. Bill Lawton is first introduced as an anonymous “man” (17), later to be named Bill Lawton (73), and later still to be revealed as bin Laden mispronounced (73). The reader first learns of Bill Lawton in a conversation between Lianne and the Siblings’ mother, Isabel, who is worried about the children’s preoccupation at the window:“It has something to do with this man.”“What man?”“This name. You’ve heard it.”“This name,” Lianne said.“Isn’t this the name they sort of mumble back and forth? My kids totally don’t want to discuss the matter. Katie enforces the thing. She basically inspires fear in her brother. I thought maybe you would know something.”“I don’t think so.”“Like Justin says nothing about any of this?”“No. What man?”“What man? Exactly,” Isabel said. (17)If “the piling up of data [...] fulfils a function in the construction of an image” (Bal 85), a delayed unravelling of the bin Laden identity distorts this data-piling so that by the time the reader learns of the Bill Lawton/bin Laden link, an image of a man is already established as separate from, and potentially exclusive of, his historical identity. The segment beginning immediately after Isabel’s comment, “What man? Exactly” (17), refers to another, unidentified man with the pronoun “he” (18), as if to further sway the reader’s attention from the subject of that man’s identity. Fludernik notes that “language games” are a key feature of the postmodern text (Towards 221), adding that “techniques of linguistic emasculation serve implicitly to question a simple and naive view of the representational potential of language” (225). I propose that, in Falling Man, bin Laden is emasculated by the Bill Lawton misnomer, and is thereby conceptualised as two entities, one historical and one fictional. The name-switch activates what psychologists refer to as a “dual-process,” conscious and unconscious, that forms the reader’s experience of the narrative (Gerrig 37), creating a cognitive dissonance between the two. Much like Wittgenstein’s duck-rabbit drawing, bin Laden and Bill Lawton exist as two separate entities, occupying the same space of the idea of bin Laden, but demanding to be viewed singularly for the process of recognition to take place. Such distortion of a well-known figure conveys the sense that, in this novel, “all identities are either confused [...] or double [...] or merging [...] or failing” (Kauffman 371), or, occasionally, doing all these things simultaneously.A similar cognitive process is triggered by the introduction of aliases for all three characters that head each of the novel’s three parts. Ernst Hechinger is revealed as Martin Ridnour’s former, ‘terrorist’ identity (DeLillo, Falling 86), and performance artist David Janiak (180) as the Falling Man’s everyday name. But the bin Laden/Bill Lawton switch offers an overt juxtaposition of the historical with the fictional or, as Žižek would have it, “the Raw real” with the “virtual” (387), and allows the mutated bin Laden/Bill Lawton figure to shift, in the mind of the reader, between the two worlds, as well as form a new, blended entity.At this point, it is important to notice that two, interconnected, forms of suspicion exist in the novel. The first is invoked in the story-level towards various terrorist-characters such as Bill Lawton, Hammad, and Martin. The second form is activated when various elements within the narrative prompt the reader to treat the text itself as suspicious, triggering in the reader a cognitive reaction that mirrors that of the narrated character. One example is the “halting process” (Leps) that is forced on the reader when attempting to manoeuvre through the narrative’s anachronical arrangement that mirrors Keith’s mental perception of time and memory. Another such narrative device is the use of “unheralded pronouns” (Gerrig 50), when ‘he’ or ‘she’ is used ambiguously, often at the beginning of a chapter or segment. The use of pronouns in narrative must adhere to strict grammatical rules (Fludernik, Introduction) and when these rules are ignored, the reading pattern is affected. First, the reader of Falling Man is immersed within an element in the story, then becomes puzzled about the identity of a character, and finally re-reads the passage to gain clarity. The reader, after a while, distances somewhat from the text, scanning for alternative possibilities and approaching interpretation with a tentative sense of doubt.The conversation between the two mothers, the Bill Lawton/bin Laden split, and the use of unheralded pronouns also destabilises the relationship between person and name, and appears to create a world in which “personality has disintegrated into a mere semiotic mark” (Versluys 21). Keith’s obsession with correcting the spelling of his surname, Neudecker, “because it wasn’t him, with the name misspelled” (DeLillo, Falling 31), Lianne’s fondness of the philosopher Kierkegaard, “right down to the spelling of his name. The hard Scandian k’s and lovely doubled a” (118), her consideration of “Marko [...] with a k, whatever that might signify” (119), and Rumsey, who is told that “everything in his life would be different [...] if one letter in his name was different” (149), are a few examples of the text’s semiotic emphasis. But, while Versluys sees this tendency as emblematic of the novel’s portrayal of a decline in humanity, I suggest that the text’s preoccupation with the shape and constitution of words may work to “de-automatise” (Margolin 66) the relationship between sign and perception, rather than to denigrate the signified human. With the renamed terrorist, the reader comes to doubt not only the printed text, but also his or her automatic response to “bin Laden” as a “brand, a sort of logo which identifies and personalises the evil” (Chomsky, September 36). Bill Lawton, according to Justin, speaks in monosyllables (102), a language Justin chooses, for a time, for his own speech (66), and this also contributes to the de-automatisation of the text. The language game, in which a speaker must only use words with one syllable, began as a classroom activity “designed to teach the children something about the structure of words and the discipline required to frame clear thoughts” (66). The game also gives players, and readers, an embodied understanding of what Genette calls the gap between “being and saying” (93) that is inevitable in the production of language and narrative. Justin, who continues to play the game outside the classroom, because “it helps [him] go slow when [he] thinks” (66), finds comfort in the silent pauses that are afforded by widening the gap between thought and utterance. History in Falling Man is a collection of the private narratives of survivors, families, terrorists, artists, and the host of people that are affected by the attacks of 9/11. Justin’s character, with the linguistic and psychic code of a child, represents the way in which all participants, to some extent, choose their own antagonist, language, plot, and sequence to personalise this mega-public event. He insists that the towers did not collapse (72), but that they will, “this time coming” (102); Bill Lawton, for Justin, “has a long beard [...] speaks thirteen languages but not English except to his wives [and] has the power to poison what we eat” (74). Despite being confronted with the factual inaccuracies of his narrative, Justin resists editing his version precisely because these inaccuracies form his own, non-mediated, authentic account. They are, in a sense, a work of fiction and, paradoxically, more ‘real’ because of that. “We want to pass beyond the limits of safe understandings”, thinks Lianne, “and what better way to do it than through make-believe” (63). I have so far shown how narrative elements create a suspicion in the way characters operate within their surrounding universe, in the reader’s attitude towards the text, and, more implicitly, in the power of language to accurately represent a personal reality. Within the context of the novel’s historical setting—the period following the 9/11 attacks—the narration of the terrorist figure, as represented in Bill Lawton, Hammad, Martin, and others, may function as a response to the “binarism” of Bush’s proposal (Butler 2), epitomised in his “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” (Silberstein 14) approach. Within the novel’s universe, its narration of terrorist-characters works to free discourse from superficial categorisations and to provide “a counterdiscourse to the prevailing nationalistic interpretations” (Versluys 23) of the events of 9/11 by de-automatising a response to “us” and “them.” In his essay published shortly after the attacks, DeLillo notes that “the sense of disarticulation we hear in the term ‘Us and Them’ has never been so striking, at either end” (“Ruins”), and while he draws distinctions, in the same essay, with technology on ‘our’ side and religious fanaticism on ‘their’ side, I believe that the novel is less settled on the subject. The Anglicisation of bin Laden’s name, for example, suggests that Bush’s either-or-ism is, at least partially, an arbitrary linguistic construct. At a time when some social commentators have highlighted the similarity in the definitions of “terror” and “counter terror” (Chomsky, “Commentary” 610), the Bill Lawton ‘error’ works to illustrate how easily language can destabilise our perception of what is familiar/strange, us/them, terror/counter-terror, victim/perpetrator. In the renaming of the notorious terrorist, “the familiar name is transposed on the mass murderer, but in return the attributes of the mass murderer are transposed on one very like us” (Conte 570), and this reciprocal relationship forms an imagined evil that is no longer so easily locatable within the prevailing political discourse. As the novel contextualises 9/11 within a greater historical narrative (Leps), in which characters like Martin represent “our” form of militant activism (Duvall), we are invited to perceive a possibility that the terrorist could be, like Martin, “one of ours […] godless, Western, white” (DeLillo, Falling 195).Further, the idea that the suspect exists, almost literally, within ‘us’, the victims, is reflected in the structure of the narrative itself. This suggests a more fluid relationship between terrorist and victim than is offered by common categorisations that, for some, “mislead and confuse the mind, which is trying to make sense of a disorderly reality” (Said 12). Hammad is visited in three short separate sections; “on Marienstrasse” (77-83), “in Nokomis” (171-178), and “the Hudson corridor” (237-239), at the end of each of the novel’s three parts. Hammad’s narrative is segmented within Keith’s and Lianne’s tale like an invisible yet pervasive reminder that the terrorist is inseparable from the lives of the victims, habituating the same terrains, and crafted by the same omniscient powers that compose the victims’ narrative. The penetration of the terrorist into ‘our’ narrative is also perceptible in the physical osmosis between terrorist and victim, as the body of the injured victim hosts fragments of the dead terrorist’s flesh. The portrayal of the body, in some post 9/11 novels, as “a vulnerable site of trauma” (Bird, 561), is evident in the following passage, where a physician explains to Keith the post-bombing condition termed “organic shrapnel”:The bomber is blown to bits, literally bits and pieces, and fragments of flesh and bone come flying outwards with such force and velocity that they get wedged, they get trapped in the body of anyone who’s in striking range...A student is sitting in a cafe. She survives the attack. Then, months later, they find these little, like, pellets of flesh, human flesh that got driven into the skin. (16)For Keith, the dead terrorist’s flesh, lodged under living human skin, confirms the malignancy of his emotional and physical injury, and suggests a “consciousness occupied by terror” (Apitzch 95), not unlike Justin’s consciousness, occupied from within by the “secret” (DeLillo, Falling 101) of Bill Lawton.The macabre bond between terrorist and victim is fully realised in the novel’s final pages, when Hammad’s death intersects, temporally, with the beginning of Keith’s story, and the two bodies almost literally collide as Hammad’s jet crashes into Keith’s office building. Unlike Hammad’s earlier and clearly framed narratives, his final interruption dissolves into Keith’s story with such cinematic seamlessness as to make the two narratives almost indistinguishable from one another. Hammad’s perspective concludes on board the jet, as “something fell off the counter in the galley. He fastened his seatbelt” (239), followed immediately by “a bottle fell off the counter in the galley, on the other side of the aisle, and he watched it roll this way and that” (239). The ambiguous use of the pronoun “he,” once again, and the twin bottles in the galleys create a moment of confusion and force a re-reading to establish that, in fact, there are two different bottles, in two galleys; one on board the plane and the other inside the World Trade Centre. Victim and terrorist, then, share a common fate as acting agents in a single governing narrative that implicates both lives.Finally, Žižek warns that “whenever we encounter such a purely evil on the Outside, [...] we should recognise the distilled version of our own self” (387). DeLillo assimilates this proposition into the fabric of Falling Man by crafting a language that renegotiates the division between ‘out’ and ‘in,’ creating a fictional antagonist in Bill Lawton that continues to lurk outside the symbolic window long after the demise of his historical double. Some have read this novel as offering a more relative perspective on terrorism (Duvall). However, like Leps, I find that DeLillo here tries to “provoke thoughtful stillness rather than secure truths” (185), and this stillness is conveyed in a language that meditates, with the reader, on its own role in constructing precarious concepts such as ‘us’ and ‘them.’ When proposing that terror, in Falling Man, can be found within ‘us,’ linguistically, historically, and even physically, I must also add that DeLillo’s ‘us’ is an imagined sphere that stands in opposition to a ‘them’ world in which “things [are] clearly defined” (DeLillo, Falling 83). Within this sphere, where “total silence” is seen as a form of spiritual progress (101), one is reminded to approach narrative and, by implication, life, with a sense of mindful attention; “to hear”, like Keith, “what is always there” (225), and to look, as Nina does, for “something deeper than things or shapes of things” (111).ReferencesApitzch, Julia. "The Art of Terror – the Terror of Art: Delillo's Still Life of 9/11, Giorgio Morandi, Gerhard Richter, and Performance Art." Terrorism, Media, and the Ethics of Fiction: Transatlantic Perspectives on Don DeLillo. Eds. Peter Schneck and Philipp Schweighauser. London: Continuum [EBL access record], 2010. 93–110.Bal, Mieke. Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narratology. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1985.Bird, Benjamin. "History, Emotion, and the Body: Mourning in Post-9/11 Fiction." Literature Compass 4.3 (2007): 561–75.Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1961.Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. New York: Verso, 2004.Chomsky, Noam. "Commentary Moral Truisms, Empirical Evidence, and Foreign Policy." Review of International Studies 29.4 (2003): 605–20.---. September 11. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2002.Conte, Joseph Mark. "Don Delillo’s Falling Man and the Age of Terror." MFS Modern Fiction Studies 57.3 (2011): 557–83.DeLillo, Don. Falling Man. London: Picador, 2007.---. "In the Ruins of the Future." The Guardian (22 December, 2001). ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/dec/22/fiction.dondelillo›.Duvall, John N. & Marzec, Robert P. "Narrating 9/11." MFS Modern Fiction Studies 57.3 (2011): 381–400.Fludernik, Monika. An Introduction to Narratology. Taylor & Francis [EBL access record], 2009.---. Towards a 'Natural' Narratology. Routledge, [EBL access record], 1996.Genette, Gerard. Figures of Literary Discourse. New York: Columbia U P, 1982.Gerrig, Richard J. "Conscious and Unconscious Processes in Reader's Narrative Experiences." Current Trends in Narratology. Ed. Greta Olson. Berlin: De Gruyter [EBL access record], 2011. 37–60.Grossinger, Leif. "Public Image and Self-Representation: Don Delillo's Artists and Terrorists in Postmodern Mass Society." Terrorism, Media, and the Ethics of Fiction: Transatlantic Perspectives on Don DeLillo. Eds. Peter Schneck and Philipp Schweighauser. London: Continuum [EBL access record], 2010. 81–92.Iser, Wolfgang. "The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach." New Literary History 3.2 (1972): 279–99.Kauffman, Linda S. "The Wake of Terror: Don Delillo's in the Ruins of the Future, Baadermeinhof, and Falling Man." Modern Fiction Studies 54.2 (2008): 353–77.Leps, Marie-Christine. "Falling Man: Performing Fiction." Terrorism, Media, and the Ethics of Fiction: Transatlantic Perspectives on Don DeLillo. Eds. Peter Schneck and Philipp Schweighauser. London: Continuum [EBL access record], 2010. 184–203.Margolin, Uri. "(Mis)Perceiving to Good Aesthetic and Cognitive Effect." Current Trends in Narratology. Ed. Greta Olson. Berlin: De Gruyter [EBL access record], 2011. 61–78.Palmer, Alan. "The Construction of Fictional Minds." Narrative 10.1 (2002): 28–46.Said, Edward W. "The Clash of Ignorance." The Nation 273.12 (2001): 11–13.Silberstein, Sandra. War of Words : Language Politics and 9/11. Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.Versluys, Kristiaan. Out of the Blue: September 11 and the Novel. New York: Columbia U P, 2009.Weinstein, Arnold. Nobody's Home: Speech, Self and Place in American Fiction from Hawthorne to DeLillo. Oxford U P [EBL Access Record], 1993.Žižek, Slavoj. "Welcome to the Desert of the Real!" The South Atlantic Quarterly 101.2 (2002): 385–89.

The main goal of this master´s thesis is to write a business plan for the board games café in Prague. The other objective is to verify its feasibility and return on investment. The key users of the business plan are founders of the café and it forms the basis for the future decision about its realisation. The theoretical part describes basic terms and individual sections of the business plan. The practical part contains the business plan itself. The main focus is on the description of the entrepreneurial opportunity, competitive analysis, marketing and financial plan, risk analysis and identification of the potential business strategies. The conclusion consists of the overall evaluation of the project based on the applied methods. The plan presents a complex picture of running a business in the chosen industry and proves a viability of the café in the future.

Le reti neurali artificiali, grazie alle nuove tecniche di Deep Learning, hanno completamente rivoluzionato il panorama tecnologico degli ultimi anni, dimostrandosi efficaci in svariati compiti di Intelligenza Artificiale e ambiti affini. Sarebbe quindi interessante analizzare in che modo e in quale misura le deep network possano sostituire le IA simboliche. Dopo gli impressionanti risultati ottenuti nel gioco del Go, come caso di studio è stato scelto il gioco del Mulino, un gioco da tavolo largamente diffuso e ampiamente studiato. È stato quindi creato il sistema completamente sub-simbolico Neural Nine Men’s Morris, che sfrutta tre reti neurali per scegliere la mossa migliore. Le reti sono state addestrate su un dataset di più di 1.500.000 coppie (stato del gioco, mossa migliore), creato in base alle scelte di una IA simbolica. Il sistema ha dimostrato di aver imparato le regole del gioco proponendo una mossa valida in più del 99% dei casi di test. Inoltre ha raggiunto un’accuratezza del 39% rispetto al dataset e ha sviluppato una propria strategia di gioco diversa da quella della IA addestratrice, dimostrandosi un giocatore peggiore o migliore a seconda dell’avversario. I risultati ottenuti in questo caso di studio mostrano che, in questo contesto, la chiave del successo nella progettazione di sistemi AI allo stato dell’arte sembra essere un buon bilanciamento tra tecniche simboliche e sub-simboliche, dando più rilevanza a queste ultime, con lo scopo di raggiungere la perfetta integrazione di queste tecnologie.

Thesis (MNutr)--Stellenbosch University, 2014.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Objectives: To measure the impact on nutrition knowledge; to ascertain the opinions and practices related to nutrition and physical activity, tuck shop visits, and dietary quality of Grade 4 learners; as well as the perceptions on and acceptability of the ‗Fun Food Game‘ (FFG) as nutrition education tool as evaluated in selected Grade 4 learners and educators. Design: A before-after, experimental study with analytical components. Setting: A purposive sample of four schools in the City of Cape Town district of the Western Cape province. Schools A and B in a higher socio-economic area served as intervention school (HIS) and control school (HCS), whereas schools C and D were in a lower socio-economic area and served as intervention school (LIS) and control school (LCS). Subjects: Grade 4 English-speaking boys (n=85), girls (n=90) and Life Orientation educators (n=10). Methods: Pre-tested questionnaires were used to determine change in nutrition knowledge, opinions and practices, both related to nutrition and physical activities in a pre-and post-setting, as well as the perceptions on and acceptability of FFG as a nutrition education (NE) tool for Grade 4 learners and educators. A ‗Dietary Diversity Questionnaire‘ was used to establish the ‗Dietary Diversity Score‘ (DDS), and to note tuck shop visits. Questionnaires were pre-tested in a pilot study. Results: Increased nutrition knowledge and improved opinion on nutrition and physical activities were measured in all schools, but practices related to nutrition and physical activities as well as visits to the tuck shop showed mixed results. In the pre- and post-setting, a DDS of 5 was measured in the HIS and HCS, with a DDS of 5 in the pre- and 6 in the post-setting in the LIS and LCS. Fewer learners had a DDS<4 in the post-setting. Consumption of most food groups and eating breakfast were higher in the post-setting. Bringing lunch boxes to school scored lower in the intervention schools. More tuck shop visits were reported in the LIS and LCS. Most (80% n=8) educators indicated a strong need for NE for themselves. All educators indicated self-learning as a means of familiarising themselves with the content of NE. Sources of nutrition advice included magazines (90% n=9), the Internet (80% n=8) and textbooks (70% n=7). A strong need for NE was expressed by all educators; however, they stated that it should not increase their work load. Educators ‗strongly agreed‘ that the educational nutrition board game FFG can be classified as ‗Health Promotion‘. Overall, learners indicated that playing FFG was a positive experience. Conclusion: Playing FFG and/or having an increased awareness regarding nutrition and physical activities at schools could have had a positive impact on nutrition knowledge and behaviour that could have resulted in positive behaviour, but no definite conclusion can be made in this regard. Nutrition behaviour was more positively influenced in the lower socio-economic schools. Implementing the Health Promoting Schools concept, where Nutrition Education Programmes form part of a multi-component strategy, is recommended.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Doel: Om die impak van voedingskennis, opinies en praktyke verwant aan voeding en fisiese aktiwiteite, snoepiebesoeke asook dieetkwaliteit van Graad 4 leerders te bepaal, sowel as die persepsie en aanvaarbaarheid van ‗Fun Food Game‘ (FFG) as hulpmiddel in voedingsopleiding soos geëvalueer deur geselekteerde Graad 4 leerders en -onderwysers. Ontwerp: ‗n Voor-na, eksperimentele studie met analitiese komponente Omgewing: ‗n Doelbewuste groepskeuse van vier skole. Skole A en B in ‗n meer gegoede area het as intervensie skool (HIS) en kontrole skool (HCS) gedien, terwyl skole C en D in ‗n minder gegoede area as intervensie skool (LIS) en kontrole skool (LCS) gedien het in die Stad Kaapstad distrik van die Westelike Provinsie. Deelnemers: Graad 4 Engelssprekende seuns (n=85), dogters (n=95) en Lewensoriënteringsonderwysers (n=10) Metodes: Voorafgetoetsde vraelyste is gebruik om te bepaal of voedingskennis, opinies en praktyke beide verwant aan voeding en fisiese aktiwiteite, voor en na die studie verander het, asook die persepsie en aanvaarbaarheid van FFG as ‗n hulpmiddel in voedingsopleiding vir geselekteerde Graad 4 leerders en onderwysers. ‗n Dieetdiversiteit Vraelys (‗Dietary Diversity Questionnaire‘ – DDQ) is gebruik om ‗n Dieetdiversiteit Telling (‗Dietary Diversity Score‘ – DDS), sowel as snoepiebesoeke te bepaal. ‗n Loodsstudie is uitgevoer om die vraelyste te toets. Resultate: ‗n Toename in voedingkennis en verbeterde opinies oor voeding en fisiese aktiwiteite is in alle skole gevind, maar praktyke oor voeding en fisiese aktiwiteite, asook snoepiebesoeke het gemengde resultate getoon. In die voor- en na-toetsing is ‗n DDS van 5 in HIS en HCS bepaal, met ‗n DDS van 5 in die voor- en 6 in die na-toetsing in LIS en LCS. Minder leerders het ‗n DDS<4 in die na-toetsing gehad. Inname van die meeste voedselgroepe sowel as ontbyt het in die skole toegeneem. Die bring van kosblikke het in die intervensie skole verminder. Die hoogste frekwensie snoepiebesoeke kom voor by die LIS en LCS. Meeste (80% n=8) onderwysers het ‗n sterk behoefte aan voedingsopleiding vir hulself aangedui. Alle onderwysers dui aan dat die inhoud van voedingskennis deur selfleer verhoog word. Tydskrifte (90%, n=9), Internet (80%, n=8) en handboeke (70%, n=7) word as bronne van voedingsadvies beskryf. ‗n Sterk behoefte vir opvoedkundige voedingsopleiding is deur al die onderwysers aangedui, maar sonder dat dit hul werkslading moet verhoog. Die onderwysers is ―sterk oortuig‖ daarvan dat die opvoedkundige voedingsbordspeletjie FFG, as ―Gesondheidsbevordering‖ geklassifiseer kan word. In die algemeen het leerders dit baie positief ervaar om FFG te speel. Samevatting: Die speel van FFG en/of ‗n groter bewusmaking van voeding en fisiese aktiwiteit wat by die skole plaasgevind het, kon ‗n positiewe impak op voedingskennis en -gedrag gehad het, wat kon lei tot positiewe gedrag, maar geen definitiewe gevolgtrekking kan gemaak word in die verband nie. Voedingsgedrag in die mindergegoede skole is meer positief beïnvloed. Implimentering van die Gesondheidsbevorderende Skole konsep, waar Voedingsopleidingsprogramme deel vorm van ‗n multi-komponent strategie, word aanbeveel.

Over the past few years the use of computer-supported games for learning purposes has reported many educational benefits in terms of students’ motivation and engagement towards learning. However, the comprehensive integration of Game-Based Learning (GBL) environments in formal learning settings is still a challenge that shapes several interdisciplinary research problems in the domain of GBL. A main problem is that for games to be relevant in formal education they need to be aligned with the curriculum and adapted to teachers’ requirements depending on their particular educational situations. An approach to face this problem is to formulate GBL technologies that enable teachers to design meaningful games for their scenarios. This thesis contributes to this approach in GBL. In particular, the thesis focuses on location-based learning games. These games are relevant to create contextualized learning activities in which physical objects and spaces are virtually augmented with interactive digital objects. The thesis’ standpoint is that for teachers to be involved in the definition of location-based games, their constituting design elements need to be of feasible customization by teachers while, at the same time, enable rich learning activities. From the premise that the structural design of location-based learning games is often inspired by board games, the thesis proposes a puzzle board metaphor and a template based on the metaphor as techniques for the design of location-based learning games. The thesis also contributes with a model for the computational representation of the games and a set of implementation guidelines. The design and implementation techniques are applied and evaluated in a set of case studies at different scales involving a total of 36 teachers and 253 students.
A lo largo de los últimos años, el uso de juegos computacionales para el aprendizaje ha aportado diversos beneficios educativos relacionados, principalmente, con la motivación y el interés de los estudiantes hacia el aprendizaje. Sin embargo, la adopción de entornos de aprendizaje basados en juegos (también conocidos como Game-Based Learning ó GBL en inglés) en contextos educativos formales todavía es un reto que conlleva varios problemas de investigación interdisciplinares dentro del dominio del GBL. Uno de los problemas principales es que para que los juegos sean relevantes en la educación formal, tienen que estar alineados con el curriculum y adaptados a los requisitos de los profesores dependiendo de sus situaciones educativas particulares. Una solución para afrontar este problema consiste en el desarrollo de tecnologías basadas en el GBL que permitan a los profesores diseñar juegos significativos para sus escenarios. Esta tesis contribuye a este enfoque en el GBL. En particular, esta tesis se centra en los juegos de aprendizaje ubicuos. Estos juegos son relevantes porque permiten crear actividades de aprendizaje contextualizadas en las que objetos y espacios físicos son virtualmente aumentados con objetos digitales interactivos. El punto de partida de esta tesis considera que, para que los profesores se involucren en el diseño de juegos de aprendizaje ubicuos, los elementos de diseño que componen este tipo de juegos tienen que poder ser personalizados por los profesores mientras que, al mismo tiempo, deben permitir la creación de actividades de aprendizaje enriquecidas. Considerando la premisa de que el diseño estructural de juegos de aprendizaje ubicuos a menudo está inspirado en “juegos de tablero”, esta tesis propone una metáfora de “tablero de puzzles” junto con un conjunto de plantillas basadas en dicha metáfora como técnicas para el diseño de juegos de aprendizaje ubicuos. Esta tesis, además, contribuye con un modelo para la representación computacional de estos juegos y una serie de guías de implementación. Tanto las técnicas de diseño como las de implementación se han utilizado y evaluado en un conjunto de estudios de caso a diferentes escalas en los que han participado un total de 35 profesores y 253 estudiantes.
Al llarg dels últims anys, l’ús de jocs computacionals per a l’aprenentatge ha aportat diversos beneficis educatius relacionats, principalment, amb la motivació i l’interès dels estudiants cap a l’aprenentatge. No obstant això, la adopció d'entorns d'aprenentatge basats en jocs (també coneguts com Game-Based Learning o GBL en anglès) en contextos educatius formals encara és un repte que comporta diversos problemes de recerca interdisciplinaris dins del domini del GBL. Un dels problemes principals és que perquè els jocs siguin rellevants en l'educació formal, han d'estar alineats amb el currículum i adaptats als requisits dels professors depenent de les seves situacions educatives particulars. Una solució per afrontar aquest problema consisteix en el desenvolupament de tecnologies basades en el GBL que permetin als professors dissenyar jocs significatius per als seus escenaris. Aquesta tesi contribueix a aquest enfocament en el GBL. En particular, aquesta tesi se centra en els jocs d’aprenentatge ubics. Aquests jocs són rellevants perquè permeten crear activitats d’aprenentatges contextualitzades en les quals objectes i espais físics són virtualment augmentats amb objectes digitals interactius. El punt de partida d’aquesta tesi considera que, perquè els professors s’involucrin en el disseny de jocs d’aprenentatge ubics, els elements de disseny que componen aquest tipus de jocs han de poder ser personalitzats pels professors mentre que, al mateix temps, permetre la creació d’activitats d’aprenentatge enriquides. Considerant la premissa que el disseny estructural de jocs d’aprenentatge ubics sovint està inspirat en “jocs de tauler”, aquesta tesi proposa una metàfora de “tauler de puzles” juntament amb un conjunt de plantilles basades en aquesta metàfora com a tècniques per al disseny de jocs d’aprenentatge ubics. Aquesta tesi, a més, contribueix amb un model per a la representació computacional d’aquests jocs i una sèrie de guies d’implementació. Tant les tècniques de disseny com les d’implementació s’han utilitzat i avaluat en un conjunt d’estudis de cas a diverses escales en els quals han participat un total de 35 professors i 253 estudiants.

碩士
國立臺北教育大學
數位科技設計學系(含玩具與遊戲設計碩士班)
101
This thesis aims at investigatimg how board game teaching video can be improved through the application of gamification. We combine a board game teaching video and some game design elements by using annotations in YouTube. It helps video be paid attention and upgrades the viewer's interest. Board game teaching video “A” which doesn’t has gamification and “B” which has gamification have been finished and upload them in Youtube, then disseminate links to some board game internet station, did the data collection in a month. During the experiment and a survey were conducted for the viewers. The results of performance metrics and audience retention demonstrated that board game teaching video which has gamification could be paid attention and upgrades the viewer's interest, but some convenient items easily lead viewers only see they want to see, bring about increased number of viewing but average viewing time doesn’t have growing, that needs attention and improvement.

碩士
東海大學
資訊工程與科學系碩士在職專班
92
Believe it or not, the existing history of PC games is almost as long as personal computers, although the first idea of the mainstream PCs was based on “business machine.” All the stuffs show the requirement of PCs is not only for business but also for entertainment. Nowadays, due to the reason that network industry is shrunken, we are sure that PC games have become one of the most profitable models in Taiwan. It, as a result, lets the game industry showing the brilliant future in Taiwan, gradually coming out of the shadow of “out of trend” and “toys for kids” in earlier times. However, currently, on the market of PC games, Taiwan can only plays the role of serving as a contrast( or selling as a consignee). The reason is that this industry was not esteem before and only developed by SOHOs or single users. It leads to the delay of the product during the developing progress, the incompleteness of the story, the difficulty of maintenance or modification. Also, the incompleteness of components results in some problems such as the low rate of reuse and lots of bugs in the program. Such problems repeat in a row. It is strikingly the same as the main problem of general developing business software in Taiwan. At present, of the game-developing teams, it is common that a programmer handles the whole project in Taiwan. It easily causes the mistake in the progress or incomprehensible program structure which is too personally. Also, the class or function can’t be used anymore after the project being developed or that co-workers can’t keep going when the programmer resigns causes some waste of the stuff, time and resource. There are a lot of articles about resolving the problem of the development of common system or application by design patterns at present, but there are few research reports or theses about resolving the problem for the computer games during program design. Thus, this article will apply several patterns of design patterns in the main program of on-line games in order to increase the possibility of reuse of on-line games, simplify the progress of designation. Hopefully the game will be released in the limited time and resource in the market of PC games which has short product life period.

碩士
國立交通大學
資訊學院資訊學程
106
Mobile gaming is growing in popularity. Even though various kinds of mobile games were released, board game is still one of long-lasting game. It is important to have online board games on mobile apps. Mobile games should be simpler to play. This makes them much easier to use and accessible for players. For online games, procedures of finding opponents, handling broken connection, reconnection and synchronization etc. are common behaviors and can be a framework for other board games. In this thesis, we design a software framework for mobile online board game. This framework implements communication between mobile client and server, design server interfaces interact with client for transporting and synchronization. Furthermore, this framework provides some common modules for iOS board game and separate game rule logic, locating games and online message communication. The iOS developers only need to focus on the development of game rule logic and user interface, so they can implement online board games more easily and efficiently.

碩士
國立臺北教育大學
數位科技設計學系(含玩具與遊戲設計碩士班)
102
Taiwan is located in the Circum-Pacific Seismic Zone, the world's greatest earthquake belt. The Ministry of Education has been working on promoting disaster precaution education for many years. Disaster precaution education is a basic and important course in K-12 education. But most of disaster precaution education teaching materials were boring and couldn’t stimulate high engagements. Board games are one kind of table games and have become one of the most favorite games in the world today. Board games teach lessons about getting along with others and reward logical reasoning problem-solving ability. This research transforms the game “Sabotuer” into a disaster precaution board game. This game can be used as a teacher’s tool when teaching courses on disaster precaution education. Besides, The development procedure of this board game can also be used as a reference for those who are interested in designing their own games in the future.

This book investigates the conflict between the managers and shareholders of large corporations. Shareholders want managers to act in ways that make their shares as valuable as possible, but managers ultimately want to maximize their own wellbeing. The outcome of manager-shareholder conflict is largely determined by a firm’s board of directors, which engages in a sequence of bargaining games with the firm’s managers. The book presents a conceptual framework for understanding board-manager interactions that is underpinned by decades of academic research into corporate governance. It shows how boards monitor managers, and the problems they face when doing so. It shows how boards provide incentives for managers to work in shareholders’ best interests, using a combination of ownership stakes and performance-based pay. And it also shows how boards delegate monitoring to outside parties, including by determining the effectiveness of the market for corporate control. In every case, tools that can benefit shareholders when used by strong boards can actually harm shareholders when used by weak boards. The book shows all of this by blending the stories of particular firms and individuals with the insights of academic research, helping the non-specialist reader understand how the seemingly disparate events it describes can be understood through the lens of manager-shareholder conflict.

AbstractThe 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) was a call from the UN that brought together key players with the objective to provide potential solutions for transforming current food systems and increasing their sustainability, resilience, equitability, nutritional value, and efficiency. Key actors from science, business, policy, healthcare, the private sector, civil society, farmers, Indigenous Peoples, youth organisations, consumer groups, environmental activists, and other key stakeholders came together before, during and after the Summit, to review how food is produced, processed, and consumed across the world in order to bring about tangible, positive changes to the world’s food systems.The White/Wiphala Paper on Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems (FAO, 2021a) was a critical reference, an evidence-based contribution to the 2021 UNFSS that highlights the crucial role of Indigenous Peoples and their food systems as game-changers and shows us how we can respect, better understand, and protect said systems. The paper resulted from the collective work of Indigenous Peoples’ leaders, scientists, researchers, and UN staff. More than 60 Indigenous and non-Indigenous contributions from 39 organisations and ten experts in six socio-cultural regions were received by the Global-Hub on Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems. The Global-Hub on Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems is a knowledge platform that brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous experts, scientists, and researchers to co-create intercultural knowledge and provide evidence about the sustainability and resilience of Indigenous Peoples’ food systems (https://www.fao.org/indigenous-peoples/global-hub/en/), which coordinated the writing and editing of the paper through a Technical Editorial Committee.The White/Wiphala paper emphasised the centrality of a rights-based approach, ensuring Indigenous Peoples’ rights and access to land, natural resources, traditional territorial management practices, governance, and livelihoods, as well as addressing the resilience and sustainability of their foods systems. The paper demonstrates how the preservation of Indigenous Peoples’ food systems is necessary for the health of more than 476 million Indigenous Peoples globally while providing valid solutions for addressing some of the challenges humankind faces on sustainability, resilience, and spirituality.It is essential to note critical developments that have occurred since the White/Wiphala paper was published in mid-2021, the July Pre-Summit in Rome, and the September Summit in New York, followed by COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021.For example, at COP26, little attention was given to food systems, despite their contribution to the climate crisis, with responsibility for 30% of greenhouse gas emissions (FAO, 2021b). COP26 highlighted the need to focus on mitigation strategies and adaptation in the face of the current climate crisis. These strategies must include Indigenous Peoples’ food systems as game-changers for effective climate adaptation strategies that they have been testing and adjusting for hundreds of years.At the UNFSS Pre-Summit in Rome, the Indigenous Peoples’ delegation voiced their concerns and presented three key proposals: the recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ food systems as a game-changing solution; the launching of a coalition on Universal Food Access and Indigenous Peoples’ food systems; and the request to create an Indigenous Peoples’ fund. All their concerns and proposals were rejected at the Pre-Summit, including launching a Coalition on Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems and Universal Food Access.In the aftermath of the UNFSS Pre-Summit, and thanks to the leadership of the Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), Indigenous leaders following the UNFSS, seven countries, and the FAO Indigenous Peoples Unit (PSUI), timely discussions and collective work led to the creation of a new Coalition on Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems.Thanks to the leadership of Mexico and the support of Canada, the Dominican Republic, Finland, New Zealand, Norway, and Spain, along with the support of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), the Global-Hub on Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems, and FAO, this Coalition was announced at the New York September UNFSS Summit.The Coalition on Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems builds upon the White/Wiphala Paper, establishing the objective of ensuring the understanding, respect, recognition, inclusion, and protection of Indigenous Peoples’ food systems while providing evidence about their game-changing and systemic nature. To support this objective, the Coalition organises its work around two main goals: Goal 1: Respect, recognise, protect and strengthen Indigenous Peoples’ food systems across the world; and Goal 2: Disseminate and scale-up traditional knowledge and good practices from Indigenous Peoples’ food systems with potential to transform global food systems across the board.

In the context of computer games, learning is an inherent feature of computer game playing. Computer games can be seen as multimodal texts that connect separate means of expression and require new kinds of literacy skills from the readers. In this chapter, the authors consider how the computer-based learning tool Talarius, which enables students to make their own digital games and play them, lends itself to literacy learning. The learning subject is a children’s novel, and thus it is narrative by its nature. In addition, the learning tool provides the potential to interweave narrative contents into the games made by it. The focus of this chapter is on the relationship between narrativity and learning in computer games, in this case, digital board games. The research question is: How do the narrative functions of the learning tool support learning in game creation and game playing?

This chapter presents viewpoints of 104 users upon trials on four mobile games which combine cognitive stimulation and physical exercise in rehabilitation. The first game requires users to control by tilting a mobile phone embedded in a balance board; the second game can be controlled by tilting the tablet computer; the third game is a modified version of Trail Making Test A—a memory test that can be played by tapping figures on the screen of tablet computer; and the fourth game is an activation game with a special controller, dedicated for people with severe physical limitations. Users welcomed the use of games as self-rehabilitation tools that can be adjusted according to personal skills and limitations. The games not only gave them meaningful activities, but also saved time and efforts of professional care takers who might be unable to socialize frequently with clients.

This chapter presents viewpoints of 104 users upon trials on four mobile games which combine cognitive stimulation and physical exercise in rehabilitation. The first game requires users to control by tilting a mobile phone embedded in a balance board; the second game can be controlled by tilting the tablet computer; the third game is a modified version of Trail Making Test A—a memory test that can be played by tapping figures on the screen of tablet computer; and the fourth game is an activation game with a special controller, dedicated for people with severe physical limitations. Users welcomed the use of games as self-rehabilitation tools that can be adjusted according to personal skills and limitations. The games not only gave them meaningful activities, but also saved time and efforts of professional care takers who might be unable to socialize frequently with clients.

This case study explores the revision process and experience learned by teaching 12 sections of an asynchronous online graduate Homeland Security Law course over a two-year period from 2018 to 2020. The chapter charts the transition of the course from a traditional format with high-stakes episodic assessments (midterm, final, and a lengthy research paper) to a discussion board-centric class using curated reading materials, case study analysis, role-playing, structured debates, and the scaffolding of shorter, low-stakes writing assignments predominately completed in the online discussion boards increased both student engagement and satisfaction as reflected by student evaluations and feedback. The chapter further argues that a collection of low-tech, low-cost design and delivery tips derived from the insights provided from scholarship and online teaching experience can create a rich and transparent online learning environment.

In the early 1970s, two decades before the World Wide Web came on the scene, the PLATO system pioneered online discussion forums and message boards, email, chat rooms, instant messaging, remote screen sharing, and multiplayer games, leading to the spontaneous emergence of the world's first online community. David R. Woolley, one of the creators of PLATO's social media features, describes this vibrant but unplanned community, and chronicles the development of the software that unexpectedly gave rise to it on a system that was intended primarily for computer-based education.

The use of Artificial Intelligence approaches as NPCs in games is a very common practice, as they seek to convey the impression to players that these characters are somewhat autonomous. One of the approaches used is the technique called NEAT, which consists of making use of artificial neural networks together with genetic algorithms to manage the topology, connections, and weights of a network in an adaptive way. This work presents the proposal to create an NPC for games in a subcategory of board games, those based on bluff and incomplete information. The game used as a case study is One Night Ultimate Werewolf, a social deduction game, so that information is incomplete for players, and part of them must use the bluff in order to confuse other players. The objective is to evaluate the possibility of modeling the behaviors of this type of game for the application of NEAT.

The article describes the author's board game and its application for solving business cases by students. The mechanics of the game, its relevance and main effects from its use in practical exercises are prescribed.

Mechanical damage to due to over-flexure is an increasing concern in the printed circuit board assembly environment. This damage can result in part rejection during manufacturing, or may combine with other failure mechanisms to result in field returns. Therefore, flexure control during circuit board assembly is a vital part of overall product quality. A metric has been developed for component-specific strain-based flexure limits using a spherical bend mode and a novel strain metric, along with a detailed method for strain gage measurement in the assembly environment. This paper presents a review of the trends that have contributed to the increased risk of damage, as well as the development of the diagonal strain metric and the use of the spherical bend mode. These methods have been successfully employed to identify excessive flexure and reduce risks to function and reliability. Two case studies that demonstrate the application and effectiveness of the procedures are presented.