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Copyright of Erciyes Akademi is the property of Erciyes Universitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

As a result of the developments in science and technology, humanity began to experience a digital transformation after the 19th century. With this digital transformation, it is seen that a serious change has occurred in human beings biologically, socially, and, more specifically, religiously. One could say that different trends have emerged at many points where human relations, the relationship of the human with the environment and with God are also affected. Among the most comprehensive and prominent of these trends is transhumanism because of its aims for humanity and the world. Transhumanism, which views technology as the main point of reference for the future of humanity, is also considered a cultural, social, and ideological human movement with its statements intended for society. It considers immortality as a goal, along with such claims as improving welfare, extending human life, and wiping out diseases by using technology in every aspect of human life. Transhumanists, who claim that they can achieve immortality thanks to technology, argue that this will happen in two ways. The first is biological immortality. It will be achieved by eliminating all kinds of biological factors that lead to humans aging and death. The second is digital or virtual immortality, which is achieved by transferring human consciousness from the biological body to computer interfaces and installing it in any desired entity. This perspective must be critically examined as it can be considered an attempt to challenge death, which is the basic doctrine of classical religions. In the present study, human immortality, considered the most important claim made by transhumanists, is criticized within kalām, Islamic theology. Of course, transhumanists' account of human immortality is impossible, according to kalām. It can be said that transhumanists view of immortal human can be considered in the category of created beings, which is defined in kalām as "the being created later and needs another being in order to exist and to continue its existence". Given that transhumanists base the idea of the immortal being upon biological healing or digital transmission, it is clear that both types of beings need someone else. Therefore, one could say that it would be more reasonable to define transhumanists' notion of immortality as the act of prolonging human life. It is because the life of immortal beings, accepted as biological or digital entities, is shaped by many factors. If these factors disappear, so does the being. On the other hand, the attribute of immortality, which belongs to the eternal being only, according to kalām, must come from itself without needing any other being. Therefore, the notion of immortal being suggested by the transhumanists must be reexamined within kalām and be redefined as the extension of life. The redefined immortality as the extension of life hardly poses kalāmī (or theological) problems. In fact, Islam encourages using all types of tools and equipment to enable humans to have a healthy and blissful life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the promising areas in human computer interaction is the brain computer interfaces and EEG headsets are widely used technology in this domain. In this study, performance comparison of two different low-cost EEG headsets, NeuroSky MindWave and Emotiv EPOC EEG, in tasks requiring attention and relaxation, and their user experience and usability evaluations were conducted. There were 12 participants who were asked to perform attention tasks that require high cognitive load and relaxation tasks. While the Affect Grid scale and AttrakDiff questionnaire were used to evaluate the user experience, the NASA Task Load Index and System Usability Scale were used to reveal the usability problems of the devices. When the statistical results were examined, it was observed that the NeuroSky MindWave was more successful than the Emotiv EPOC in relaxation tasks. However, both have similar results in tasks requiring attention. According to the user experience evaluation results, it was observed that the participants felt tired while using both EEG heads, but were still satisfied with the use of the devices. They reported more positive opinions for NeuroSky MindWave in terms of usability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) are systems that are originally developed to assist patients with paralyzed illnesses and they provide commands to the computer with brain activities. In this study, it is aimed to investigate the cognitive work load with objective, easy to apply and interpretable method by using Brain Computer Interface systems. In the pilot study, seventy healthy participants performed six tasks via a BCI system and simultaneously collected participants'pupil sizes, blink rate and galvanic skin resistance (GSR) data. After each task, the participants fills out the NASA-TLX forms while the achievement levels of the participants are determined. By statistically analyzing the collected data, the tendency of cognitive load for different BCI applications of the participants and the most significant changes during tasks are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Mersin University Journal of the Faculty of Education / Mersin Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi is the property of Mersin University Faculty of Education and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The most important factor in aircraft flight safety is the interfaces, which provide human-machine interaction. There is a close relationship between flight safety and interface usability with pilot-cockpit interaction quality. The consequences of crew errors in interacting with cockpit interfaces are catastrophic. Interaction quality and flight safety can be improved with a user-friendly interface design. Different usability evaluation techniques are applied for interface design and usability in literature. Subjectivity within most usability evaluation techniques may lead to inaccurate results. In this study, a multi-criteria approach is offered for the usability evaluation, improvement and ranking of cockpit interfaces. Alternative interfaces, used in this study, are the results of quantitative, qualitative and unified design approaches. More satisfactory results were obtained from the unified design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal of InformaticsTechnologies is the property of Institute of Informatics, Gazi University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this study, a computer code is developed to make performance planning of a helicopter automatically. With the purpose of elimination of some existing difficulties encountered from manual performance planning, the code based on curve fitting method is applied to the performance planning charts of AS-532 Cougar helicopter. In the computer code, association between curves and lines depending on the values determined for entry data value is performed by using Matlab GUI interface. For some flight conditions, performance planning card is prepared by using the code. This card is compared with the one obtained manually. All result reflects the effectiveness of the computer applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of scientific workflow systems for orchestrating complex tasks is still an open research area. In particular, earth system related modeling applications consists of different tasks that are closely related to each other and scientific workflow systems can be used to simplify these sub processes and their relationships. The motivation for this work is driven by the complexities of running a large modeling system on a high performance computing and network systems and need to reduce those complexities, particularly for the average user. In this study, it is presented and analyzed a new methodology to combine scientific workflow system and modeling framework approach together to create standardized work environment. Then, the pro-posed methodology is tested using a typical and realistic earth system modeling application. The result of example workflows that are based on the pro-posed methodology is a part of this study. A Modeling framework is a standardized programming environment for combining model components and couplers of different kinds of earth system models using a common calling interface. Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF) is one of the most popular examples for this approach. It consists of a superstructure for coupling components of Earth system applications and an infrastructure of robust, high-performance utilities and data structures that ensures consistent component behavior. Extending beyond the modeling framework approach, scientific workflow systems create standardized interfaces to a variety of technologies and automate the execution and monitoring of a heterogeneous workflow. Namely, a scientific workflow system is a problem-solving environment that simplifies tasks by creating meaningful and easy understandable sub-tasks and combining them to form executable data management and analysis pipelines. Kepler was chosen as the workflow environment for this work because it is open source, platform independent, and it supports different models of computation such as Process Network (PN) and Synchronous Data Flow (SDF). Kepler is a scientific work-flow system that is based on the Ptolemy II project. The actor-oriented design of Kepler enables users to create hierarchically structured scientific workflows. The overall execution of model is controlled by separate component that is called a director (a special actor). Kepler supports different model of computation types via its directors. In application example, a regional coupled climate modeling system is developed for Mediterranean region and integrated into workflow system to provide better representation of regional climate system. This application has crucial importance in downscaling output of the global circulation models over Turkey and near regions. It also can be used to create better representation of regional climate for the future scenarios. The workflow application also collects provenance information automatically from the coupled earth system modeling system to reproduce, compare and debug results. The coupled atmosphere-ocean modeling system is based on NCAR's Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) and Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) model. To couple atmosphere and ocean models the ESMF library is used. For the atmospheric component (WRF), the experimental ESMF-IO structure is used to create ESMF fields and states to share data between different model components. The WRF ESMF-IO is also modified to add field level metadata into coupling variables (heat and momentum fluxes) of atmospheric model. In ocean component (ROMS), the coupler code is written to control each model component and also the gridded component code is developed to run each earth system model via ESMF init, run and finalize methods. The gridded component level metadata is added into coupler to create prototype version of self-describing modeling system. The results show that the developed workflow environment is capable of running different earth system models on a different high performance computing resource with a meaningful abstraction. The pro-posed work environment acts as an abstraction layer and hides the detail of the used infrastructure and earth system model from user and it also collect standardized provenance information about both model and computing resource to represent the work environment as possible as it can. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Necatibey Faculty of Education Electronic Journal of Science & Mathematics Education is the property of Balikesir University, Necatibey Faculty of Education and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Teknoloji is the property of Engineering Science & Technology, an International Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses an approach designed by the author and his team that can improve the modularity of programs written using AspectJstyle aspect-oriented programming (AOP). The main mechanism involved in AspectJ is the advising of crosscutting sets of join points. An aspect module uses a pointcut descriptor (PCD) to declaratively specify sets of points in program executions where anonymous methods should run. The approach employs crosscut programming interfaces or XPIs. These are explicit, abstract interfaces that decouple aspects from details of advised code. The approach better modularizes aspects and advised code without limiting the possibilities for aspect-oriented advising or requiring new programming languages or mechanisms. It allows for separate and parallel evolution of codes and produces a better correspondence between programs and designs. The approach emerged from an experiment by the team using common AOP methods to improve the design of a Java system for multicast overlay networks. The most common approach for developing aspects is to write PCDs directly against the implementations of the code to be advised. INSET: Related Work on Aspect-Oriented Mechanisms for Software Design..

The article discusses ways to identify and capture early aspects in requirements and architecture activities related to computer softwares. Early aspects are concerns that crosscut an artifact's dominant decomposition or base modules derived from the dominant separation-of-concerns criterion, in the early stages of the software life cycle. Identifying and managing early aspects helps in improving modularity in the requirements and architecture design and to detect conflicting concerns early, thus resolving trade-offs. Besides, identifying aspects at one stage provides benefits downstream. Knowledge of requirements-level aspects helps architects in designing a better systems. Similarly, knowing architecture-level aspects helps produce a better implementation. Early aspects can measure development activities and many find their way into the code as traditional implementation aspects. Identifying early aspects across phases can increase the consistency of requirements and architecture designs with each other and provides a rationale and traceability for aspects across life-cycle activities. INSET: Dominant Decomposition in Early Software Development..

Copyright of Teknoloji is the property of Engineering Science & Technology, an International Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article presents information on portability of a project's non-source code asset. The portability of a project's non-source code assets means more than allowing those assets to move freely between different organizations and developers. Portability also means that a marketplace for tools can evolve without the artificial restrictions of the vendor lock-ins imposed by incompatible data formats and associated switching costs. Such an environment would let different tools compete on their actual technical merits, without the artificially cozy protection of their installed base's captive audience. One should interchange format and let the tools compete of stability, usability, performance, and data manipulation capabilities. Databases, compilers, and Web browsers have all flourished under a regime of standardized interfaces. Nowadays, a software system's program source code makes up only a small part of its assets stored as bits-taking up a larger percentage are specifications, design diagrams, application server deployment scripts, build rules, version history, documentation, and regression tests.