Experiment 3

Although experimental studies have shown a strong impact of text layout on the legibility of e- text, many digital texts appearing in eBook or the Internet use different designs, so that there is no straightforward answer in the literature over which one to follow when designing e- material. Therefore, in this chapter we shall focus on the text layout, particularly the influence of line length. This experiment is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on the factor of line length by studying its effect on reading speed and accuracy using various columns [one column and two columns] with each page having the same amount of information. The second part tests a new approach which basically assumes that by using different colours for the first and last word of each line, it will improve students' reading level. This hypothesis was based on pervious findings over the difficulty of being able to immediately locate the following line (Chan and Lee 2005). In addition, this approach was based on explanation of the eye movement which, in the reading process, does not scan a line but stops for about ¼ of a second before jumping to new place such as at the end of the line when the eye goes back to the beginning of the new line.

Experiment 2

The outcomes for the previous experiment in this research indicated that students' attitudes differ according to the way of presenting the text and text layout. As the aim of the study was to investigate the three main typographic variables [font size, font type and line length] we will start by font size and font type. Much research has highlighted the character size as a factor in visual display, and reported that font size has a significant effect on readability of texts in both versions. Therefore, defining a readable font size for the Arabic language is the main focus of this experiment, taking into account the effect of one dependent variable, four controlled variables and two independent variables: content length and font type. Students were required to make different judgments of letter pairs, thus indicating which letters were distinguishable. Based on the findings of this experiment, subsequent experiments were designed. In addition, the findings of this experiment will be able to address the issues related to reading Arabic text from screen by children in relation to the following: RQ1: In which font size is the Arabic text read most effectively? RQ2: Is there any correlation between age of the reader and font size? RQ3: Which font type is more readable?

Access and Use of the Internet among Libyan Primary School Students

This chapter aims to examine the use of the internet and eBook among students in public primary schools in Libya. The literature showed a lack of research that examines access to the Internet, students' awareness of eBook, and using the computer for learning at school. However, this type of research has been important in providing a better understanding of eBook usage and helping designers to create eBooks that meet user needs. Thus, the number of netizens determines the causes of use as a starting point for understanding and determining e- reading stages in order to investigate the factors that affect e- text reading among young people. This chapter presents the questionnaire data as analysed by the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software for analysis and focuses on collecting quantitative data that can help build a clear understanding of current user behaviour. At the end of this chapter, these two objectives should be met: examining the use of Internet among students aged 9 to 13, and defining the awareness and aim of using eBook among students.

Palmprint Recognition Based on Image Segmentation of Region of Interest

To carry out an effective recognition for palmprint, this paper presents an algorithm of image segmentation of region of interest (ROI), extracts the ROI of a palmprint image and studies the composing features of palmprint. This paper constructs coordinates by making use of characteristic points in the palm geometric contour, improves the algorithm of ROI extraction, and provides a positioning method of ROI. Moreover, this paper uses the wavelet transform to divide up ROI, extracts the energy feature of wavelet, gives an approach of matching and recognition to improve the correctness and efficiency of existing main recognition approaches, and compares it with existing main approaches of palmprint recognition by experiments. The experiment results show that the approach in this paper has the better recognition effect, the faster matching speed, and the higher recognition rate which is improved averagely by 2.69% than those of the main recognition approaches.

A Local Approach and Comparison with Other Data Mining Approaches in Software Application

In order to complete an online, real-time and effective aging detection to software, this paper studies a local approach that is also called a fuzzy incomplete and a statistical data mining approaches, and gives their algorithm implementation in the software system fault diagnosis. The application comparison of the two data mining approaches with four classical data mining approaches in software system fault diagnosis is discussed. The performance of each approach is evaluated from the sensitivity, specificity, accuracy rate, error classified rate, missed classified rate, and run-time. An optimum approach is chosen from several approaches to do comparative study. On the data of 1020 samples, the operating results show that the fuzzy incomplete approach has the highest sensitivity, the forecast accuracy that are 96.13% and 94.71%, respectively, which is higher than those of other approaches. It has also the relatively less error classified rate is or so 4.12%, the least missed classified rate is or so 1.18%, and the least runtime is 0.35s, which all are less than those of the other approaches. After the performance, indices are all evaluated and synthesized, the results indicate the performance of the fuzzy incomplete approach is best. Moreover, from the test analysis known, the fuzzy incomplete approach has also some advantages, such as it has the faster detection speed, the lower storage capacity, and does not need any prior information in addition to data processing. These results indicate that the mining approach is more effective and feasible than the old data mining approaches in software aging detection.

Findings and Discussions on the Neural Trust and Multi-Agent System

This chapter focuses on the testing for a complete systematic neural trust model developed previously based on the trust learning algorithms, trust estimation algorithm and reputation mechanisms. The focus is to describe the detailed design of the model and explain the rationales behind the model design. The purpose is to evaluate the proposed neural trust model from different aspects and analyze the results of the evaluations. Experiments have been conducted. Results are presented and discussed. Finally, based on the analysis and comparison of acquired results, conclusions are drawn.

Introduction to the Investigating in Neural Trust and Multi Agent Systems

Introducing trust and reputation into multi-agent systems can significantly improve the quality and efficiency of the systems. The computational trust and reputation also creates an environment of survival of the fittest to help agents recognize and eliminate malevolent agents in the virtual society. The research redefines the computational trust and analyzes its features from different aspects. A systematic model called Neural Trust Model for Multi-agent Systems is proposed to support trust learning, trust estimating, reputation generation, and reputation propagation. In this model, the research innovates the traditional Self Organizing Map (SOM) and creates a SOM based Trust Learning (STL) algorithm and SOM based Trust Estimation (STE) algorithm. The STL algorithm solves the problem of learning trust from agents' past interactions and the STE solve the problem of estimating the trustworthiness with the help of the previous patterns. The research also proposes a multi-agent reputation mechanism for generating and propagating the reputations. The mechanism exploits the patterns learned from STL algorithm and generates the reputation of the specific agent. Three propagation methods are also designed as part of the mechanism to guide path selection of the reputation. For evaluation, the research designs and implements a test bed to evaluate the model in a simulated electronic commerce scenario. The proposed model is compared with a traditional arithmetic based trust model and it is also compared to itself in situations where there is no reputation mechanism. The results state that the model can significantly improve the quality and efficacy of the test bed based scenario. Some design considerations and rationale behind the algorithms are also discussed based on the results.

Conclusion and Future Work in E-Reading Context

This research is an attempt to examine the effect of reading processes on designing e-texts for children using Arabic script. In addition, it aims to develop a model for designing acceptance that will have the power to demonstrate acceptance and usage behaviour of the e-school text using a schoolbook for primary schools in Libya. Alternatively, dealing with the research problem led to the specification of the following research objectives, which were achieved through four inter- related surveys: to build an e-reading strategy for a schoolbook based on users' cognitive and behaviour processes, to define the typographical variables that affect reading Arabic texts from the screen such as font size, font type, background color, line length and text format from a literature survey, to provide a standard that can help keep children's concentration on the text, to create a guideline that could help designers when designing e-Arabic texts for children, to examine in-depth the challenges of reading Arabic e-texts, to study the efficiency of Arabic text reading and the factors impacting the efficiency of reading and comprehension, to understand children's behaviour when reading from a screen. The aim of this chapter is to discuss the study's contribution to knowledge and provide recommendations for future research.

Experiment 1

In order to be sure that the level of e-text usability in early education can be improved, the following questions should be answered by the end of this chapter: RQ1: What are the existing prototypes (structure) of schoolbooks in primary education (PE)? RQ2: How are students interacting with schoolbooks in the electronic and printed version? RQ3: Is there a difference in the reading process between e-school textbook and p-school text-book? Quantitative and qualitative data were used in order to answer these three questions. The outcome was two flow charts which explain the interactions among students when reading e- schoolbook and paper schoolbook. In addition, it draws a clear picture of the design and structure of schoolbooks in Libya which are similar to schoolbooks used in other Arabic countries at the same educational level. The chapter comprises two main sections. The first section presents the data collection methods and research type. The second section displays the results of the observation. The chapter ends with a conclusion highlighting the main points that has discussed in the chapter.

Theoretical and Empirical Background to the eBook

A textbook in any e-educational system is an important element that requires a closer look at its components and structure, as well as identifying the barriers that affect the level of learning. This can be achieved in different aspects such as the analysis of textual content or sentence structure which is one of the concerns of linguists. On the other hand, examining the textual content can determine the appropriateness of the education level for students. This type of assessment is part of educators' concerns and by examining and defining the factors that could affect reading a text on screen, this is usually related to the way of displaying text such as font size, colour, background colour, amount of text and the location of the text on the screen. This is a key focus of this research. In this chapter, the concern will be to define the concepts and the structure of an e- document as a starting point to investigate the usability of e-texts as it covers the following: definition of e-document; history of eBook; structure of e-textbook; contribution of e-textbook for education; comparison between reading electronic and paper book; young people and the use of the internet and computer; statistical data for using the internet in Arabic countries; designing an e-textbook.