Virtual Reality (VR) offers immersive experiences that allow individuals to adopt others’ perspectives, presenting a promising tool for reducing stigma and enhancing empathy. Nevertheless, empirical findings regarding the effectiveness of VR in cultivating empathy remain inconsistent. This study examined the impact of first-person experiences in public settings on empathy toward individuals with schizophrenia. Participants interacted with simulations via either desktop computers or immersive VR devices. After the experience, they completed self-report questionnaires assessing empathy and spatial presence across conditions. Results indicate that VR-based psychosis simulations enhance empathic concern, cognitive empathy, and affective empathy, though they do not reduce personal distress. Furthermore, media modality exerted a notable influence on attitudes, with heightened spatial presence in VR strongly associated with deeper immersion and greater empathic and attitudinal improvements. These findings highlight the potential of VR first-person narratives as an effective tool for fostering empathy and advancing health education on psychosis.

A campus butterfly garden is a useful resource for teaching natural science. Students can learn about butterfly ecology by breeding and observation activities to understand the continuation of life and develop the sentiments of respecting life. However, a butterfly garden requires professional planning, construction and maintenance for sustainable development. In this study, augmented reality and mobile learning technologies were used to develop a virtual butterfly ecological system by integrating with the host plants and nectar plants in campus. Students can use smart phones or tablet PCs to breed virtual butterflies on host plants and observe their life cycles at different growing stages. With the available space in campus, a virtual butterfly garden was designed as a greenhouse where the users could observe different species of butterflies using the tracking telescope. The virtual butterfly ecological system can increase the learning motivation and interest of students through virtual breeding and observation activities. It has both educational and entertaining functions, and is therefore a suitable assistant tool for science education in elementary and high schools.

The motor vehicle is an important way of transportation for modern people, and its license plate is just like our identification cards which can be used for effective management of motor vehicles. Hence, the development of a recognition system for license plates can reduce the workload of managing motor vehicles. A license plate recognition system based on computer vision often causes recognition errors due to the plate's angle problem and thus needs to be assisted by manual recognition. In this study, a recovery method for license plate images with large angles is proposed based on perspective projection to increase the recognition accuracy. The experimental results show that applying the angle recovery method to a license plate recognition system can reduce its errors, especially for license plate images with large angles. For the case of small angles, a recognition rate of 89% can be achieved by the angle recovery method, slightly higher than that of the plane rotation method (86%). For the case of a wide range of different angles, the average recognition rate achieved by the angle recovery method is 87.5%, much higher than that of the plane rotation method (57.5%). Thus, the angle recovery method is effective for enhancing the accuracy of license plate recognition systems.

This study combined context-aware mechanisms with the main functions of smart phones to develop a motion-sensing and game-based mobile learning system that can provide related information about many plants in the Taipei Botanical Garden. This study developed six types of motions on smart phones involving common botanical misconceptions and integrated these motions into botany-themed learning activities. The purpose was to correct such misconceptions through motion-based learning. This study investigated the influence of whether or not using motion-sensing educational mobile games on learning achievement and learning retention. Experimental results showed that learning achievement in the experimental group (which used motion-sensing mobile learning) and the control group (which did use non-motion-sensing mobile learning) both were improved, moreover, the learning retention of the experimental group significantly exceeded those of the control group.

Synchrotron light sources have been applied in many fields of scientific researches, including advanced physics, chemistry, life science, materials science, environmental protection, nanotechnology and so on. It is also an important indicator of the high technology performance in many countries. This research integrated the knowledge and concepts of synchrotron light source into the curriculum of science and life technology in elementary schools by developing the virtual synchrotron light source model and its digital learning contents, hoping to increase the interest of elementary students in familiarizing and learning this advanced technology.

The butterfly is a valuable nature resource from the viewpoint of education and tourism. In recent years, the over-exploitation of mountainous areas and overuse of pesticide results in dramatic decrease of butterfly species and populations. This paper studies the related network and virtual reality technologies for developing a virtual butterfly museum and the objective is to provide students and the general public with a web-learning environment for studying butterfly ecology. The virtual museum exhibits several species of butterflies, including Pieridae, Papilionidae, Danaidae, Satyridae, Nymphalidae, as well as insects often seen in Taiwan. We can visit it through network at any time and from anywhere to proceed with observation and learning activities, and discuss with others on the website. Therefore, it can help people understand butterfly ecology and promote the protection of natural environments.

Scheduling periodic and aperiodic tasks to meet their time constraints has been an important issue in the design of real-time computing systems. Usually, the task scheduling algorithms in such systems must satisfy the deadlines of periodic tasks and provide fast response times for aperiodic tasks. A simple and efficient approach to scheduling real-time tasks is the use of a periodic server in a static preemptive scheduling algorithm. Periodic tasks, including the server, are scheduled at priori to meet their deadlines according to the knowledge of their periods and computation times. The scheduling of aperiodic tasks is then managed by the periodic server during its service time. In this paper, a new scheduling algorithm is proposed. The new algorithm creates a periodic server which will have the highest priority but not necessarily the shortest period. The server is suspended to reduce the overhead if there are no aperiodic tasks waiting, and is activated immediately upon the arrival of the next aperiodic task. After activated, the server performs its duty periodically until all waiting aperiodic tasks are completed. For a set of tasks scheduled by this algorithm, the deadlines of periodic tasks are guaranteed by a deterministic feasibility check, and the mean response time of aperiodic tasks are estimated using a queueing model. Based on the analytical results, we can determine the period and service time of the server producing the minimum mean response time for aperiodic tasks. The analytical results are compared with simulation results to demonstrate the correctness of our model.