UpStream

This study forms a broader input on ICT and learner integration; it has specific scientific results that not only address access but also go beyond social and economic inequalities that communities face with limitations on social and economic activity that impact and scientific and academic growth of communities. This study aimed to investigate the effects of interactive visualization tools on the mathematical performance of intermediate pupils at Dangguinan Elementary School, Conner, Apayao, Philippines. The problem being studied centers on persistent difficulties in Mathematics performance, particularly learners' struggles in grasping abstract concepts and applying problem-solving skills effectively. Amongst the tools the study investigated included GeoGebra, simulations, and animated presentations could address persistent challenges in Mathematics performance. The research utilized a mixed-methods design, combining both quantitative and qualitative approaches to examine improvements in mathematics learning and explore implementation challenges. The study's mixed-methods approach offers a comprehensive understanding of both the quantitative impact on learning outcomes and the qualitative challenges encountered during implementation. Its findings are crucial for educational stakeholders in developing countries like the Philippines, as they highlight the potential of ICT integration in addressing persistent low math proficiency, while also underscoring the critical need to address infrastructure and digital literacy gaps for successful technology adoption in underserved areas. The study was conducted at Dangguinan Elementary School, Conner, Apayao, during the academic year 2024–2025. Forty-six pupils from Grades 4 to 6 participated in the study. The research applied the DepEd Likert Scale to group learners by their mathematics skills, instead of just using mean scores to assess them. Learners who had 15–17 points out of 20 (equivalent to 71%–85%) received the rating of "Proficient"—signifying they met the expected understanding and skills for their age. By using this method, educators could watch how each learner was improving and decide who might need more help. Rather than presenting average scores, the study used a thorough scale to better show how learning improved when interactive visualizations were used. A pre-test was administered to assess baseline mathematical proficiency. Following this, an instructional intervention was implemented using interactive visualization tools. After the intervention, a post-test was conducted to evaluate performance improvement. Additionally, interviews were carried out to understand the challenges encountered during the intervention. Quantitative results were analyzed using descriptive statistics and a paired sample t-test, while qualitative data were thematically analyzed. The pre-test mean score was 7.6, falling under the "Developing" performance level. Post-test scores improved significantly to a mean of 11.8, aligning with the "Approaching Proficiency" level. Statistical analysis revealed a significant difference between pre-test and post-test results (P = .000). Interviews revealed two major challenges: poor internet connectivity and insufficient orientation in using the tools, both of which affected the learners’ engagement with interactive visualization. To address this, alternative offline versions of instructional materials were provided, ensuring accessibility despite connectivity issues. Additionally, structured training sessions were introduced to familiarize learners with visualization tools before implementation, enhancing their confidence and ability to navigate digital learning environments effectively. The study concludes that interactive visualization tools significantly enhance intermediate pupils' mathematical understanding and performance. The research shows that using these interactive tools greatly improves how intermediate pupils understand and perform in mathematics. Still, overcoming problems with access and training is necessary to use them well. According to the study, upgrading the infrastructure and adding satellite technology for better connectivity, as well as apps that let learners work offline, would help make technology-aided math more effective. In addition, teachers should receive instruction, and learners should participate in orientation to help ICT become an important part of learning mathematics. Schools need support from educational stakeholders towards long-term digital change, helping them select and learn how to use the needed technology.

VisOpt: a visual interactive optimization tool for P-median problems

The object-oriented theory has been widely used in software design and development and Java programming language is a popular object-oriented programming language for computer science related majors in higher education. With the huge demand for intelligent manufacturing employees in the work market, more and more universities have listed Java programming language in their curriculum for non-CS undergraduates. However, learning object-oriented programming languages, such as Java, is tough even for CS students. This paper presents how to improve non-CS undergraduate students’ learning outcomes of java language by adopting industry standard professional integrated development tool Eclipse and interactive visual educational tool BlueJ. Our Java programming language course is an alternative 8-week course including 16 h lecture and 16 h lab. Forty-seven junior students from mechanical engineering major were divided into two groups, 23 in the control group (CG) and 24 in the experimental group (EG). Students in both groups used Eclipse to write and run programs during the course while BlueJ was adopted to demonstrate the object-oriented concepts during the fifth and sixth weeks only for students in the EG. A pre-test, which was taken by students from both groups, shows no statistical differences in programming knowledge between the two groups. Results from the post-test at the end of the sixth week show students in EG achieved better performance than students in CG. Results of the survey for the EG reveal that students thought BlueJ was helpful for mastering the concepts of object-oriented programming.KeywordsJava programmingLearning outputHigher educationInteractiveVisualBlueJEclipse

With every advancement in mHealth sensing technology, we are presented with an abundance of data streams and models that enable us to make sense of health information we record. To distill this diverse and ever-growing data into meaningful information, we must first develop tools that can represent data intuitively and are flexible enough to handle the special characteristics of mHealth records. For example, whereas traditional health data such as electronic health records (EHR) often consist of discrete events that may be readily analyzed and visualized, mHealth entails sensor ensembles that generate continuous, multivariate data streams of high-resolution and often noisy measurements. Drawing from methodologies in machine learning and visualization, interactive visual analytics tools are an increasingly important aid to making sense of this complexity. Still, these computational and visual techniques must be employed attentively to represent this data not only intuitively, but also accurately, transparently, and in a way that is driven by user needs. Acknowledging these challenges, we review existing visual analytic tools to identify design solutions that are both useful for and adaptable to the demands of mHealth data analysis tasks. In doing so, we identify open problems for representing and understanding mHealth data, suggesting future research directions for developers in the field.

Electronic health records (EHRs) can be used to make critical decisions, to study the effects of treatments, and to detect hidden patterns in patient histories. In this paper, we present a framework to identify and analyze EHR-data-driven tasks and activities in the context of interactive visualization tools (IVTs)—that is, all the activities, sub-activities, tasks, and sub-tasks that are and can be supported by EHR-based IVTs. A systematic literature survey was conducted to collect the research papers that describe the design, implementation, and/or evaluation of EHR-based IVTs that support clinical decision-making. Databases included PubMed, the ACM Digital Library, the IEEE Library, and Google Scholar. These sources were supplemented by gray literature searching and reference list reviews. Of the 946 initially identified articles, the survey analyzes 19 IVTs described in 24 articles that met the final selection criteria. The survey includes an overview of the goal of each IVT, a brief description of its visualization, and an analysis of how sub-activities, tasks, and sub-tasks blend and combine to accomplish the tool’s main higher-level activities of interpreting, predicting, and monitoring. Our proposed framework shows the gaps in support of higher-level activities supported by existing IVTs. It appears that almost all existing IVTs focus on the activity of interpreting, while only a few of them support predicting and monitoring—this despite the importance of these activities in assisting users in finding patients that are at high risk and tracking patients’ status after treatment.

Big data analytics in healthcare would be almost useless, without suitable tools allowing users see" them, and gain insight for their situated decisions. The VVH (Valuable Visualization in Healthcare) workshop focuses on the role of interactive data visualization tools by which people can make sense of healthcare data; these data include sensor data, the messages exchanged in social media, the emails between patients and their doctors, the content of patient records as well as the discussions among different specialists that led to such record content. All these data are used by different types of users, like doctors, nurses, policy makers and common citizens. The VVH workshop aims at contributing on: The assessment of the usability of advanced interactive tools of health-related data visualization; the assessment of the quality of the information and value for insight that these tools make available to their users; the collection of reports of either success stories or failures in the appropriation and use of complex and multidimensional healthcare datasets; the collection of methodological and design-oriented contributions that could share methods, techniques, and heuristics for the design of interactive tools and applications supporting data work, data telling and data interpretation in healthcare.

The application of database technologies in education, commerce and industry, continues to grow at an unrelenting pace. Examples of such applications include GIS, CAD, Bibliographic databases, Management Information Systems, Multimedia, and so forth. Relational databases have found a wide application and now the more recent object-orientated database methodologies are finding increased application. Issues relating to database technology include: storage management; representation of information types, particularly in multimedia; data models; indexing strategies; query processing; query languages and user-intermediary systems. This three-paper session considers some of these issues in relation to database storage management and retrieval techniques. >

The physiological age-related development of pediatric laboratory results interferes with pathological derangements, which can complicate the interpretation of test results. Recently proposed continuous reference intervals (RIs) promise to be beneficial, although their clinical use may depend on graphical presentations. To estimate the clinical utility of continuous RIs, we developed and evaluated an interactive visualization tool, and examined the differentiation of hemoglobinopathies that is attainable based on the underlying innovative RI model. The implemented web application allows users to easily enter laboratory test results, and displays various visualizations in conjunction with the corresponding RIs, such as charts and personalized Z-scores. To evaluate the usability of the visualization tool, we conducted concurrent think-aloud sessions with four physicians, who were prompted to solve a set of typical interpretation tasks, and acquired additional information through a questionnaire including the System Usability Scale (SUS). We used 85 de-identified clinical cases for an exemplified assessment of how well model-based interpretations of blood count parameters reproduced previously diagnosed hemoglobinopathies. Usability tests as well as questionnaire responses indicated that the developed tool was well received by the physicians. Results from the think-aloud evaluation revealed only minor problems and the tool reached an average SUS score of 86.9, suggesting good usability. Hemoglobinopathy discrimination depended on the considered subtype, although the overall performance of the novel method rivaled the one of the conventional approach. The interactive visualization of innovative continuous reference intervals demonstrated promising results, which justifies further testing on the path towards clinical routine.

Data Mining aims at extracting maximum of knowledge from huge databases. It is realized by an automatic process or by data visual exploration with interactive tools. Automatic data mining extracts all the patterns which match a set of metrics. The limit of such algorithms is the amount of extracted data which can be larger than the initial data volume. In this article, we focus on association rules extraction with Apriori algorithm. After the description of a characterization model of a set of association rules, we propose to explore the results of a Data Mining algorithm with an interactive visual tool. There are two advantages. First it will visualize the results of the algorithms from different points of view (metrics, rules attributes...). Then it allows us to select easily inside large set of rules the most relevant ones.

Local area network (LAN) access is the top vector for insider threats and misuses according to the Verizon's Data Breach Investigations Report. Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is often exploited by the attackers who have gained access to the LAN. It is critical for students to learn how attacks on ARP work and know the countermeasures. In an earlier work, authors developed a hands-on lab to help students learn how an ARP spoofing attack works by asking them to create and send attack packets. To enhance learning further, we present an interactive visualization tool that intuitively shows the effects of the ARP spoofing attack in real-time. The Hacker Graphical User Interface (HGUI) is an interactive visualization tool developed to assist students in learning how ARP Spoofing works. By modeling a controlled ARP Spoofing attack using virtual machines, we give students the ability to alter elements of the attack by interacting with the visualization. This tool was developed using Processing, an open source programming language used in many visual art communities. It runs on virtual machines installed with Kali Linux. This tool animates attack packets, normal packets, and the status of ARP cache in real-time. If students have successfully carried out the ARP spoofing attack, they can see the normal packets being routed to the attacker machine and the victim's ARP cache being poisoned. In this paper, we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of the lab. Tests were conducted to measure the performance of students before and after using this tool. We also gave students surveys after they completed the hands-on lab. The result shows that this tool can significantly enhance students' understanding of the concept of ARP spoofing attacks and motivate them in learning more about cyber security.

In this work, we present a demonstration of a visual interactive tool called ESSAVis that helps different engineers in collaborating together for understanding the failure mechanisms in complex embedded systems. ESSAVis provides a 2Dplus3D visual user interface that integrates intuitively between different data sets related with embedded systems failure mechanisms. The tool accepts a CFT model describing a specific hazard in the underlying system, and a CAD model describing the geometry of system components. In this paper, we present different interaction options of ESSAVis that are used for intuitively extracting safety aspects of the underlying embedded system.

Data clustering is an important technique for data visualization and statistical data analysis. Using data clustering technique for geo-located data analysis and visualization has been shown to be useful in many practical domains. Although there are numerous studies for data clustering algorithms, the implementations and applications based on these algorithms are rare and inadequate, especially for web-based data visualization services. In this research, a new web-based interactive data clustering prototype is proposed for geo-located data visualization. The necessary web-based infrastructure for geo-located data analysis and visualization is designed and implemented at first. And then the new interactive data clustering prototype using multi-dimensional K-Means algorithm is implemented on the existing infrastructure. In order to assess whether the new prototype can contribute meaningfully to architectural design and urban studies, qualified users with urban study or architectural backgrounds are invited to use the prototype and then make their comments and evaluations. To make it clear how this new prototype might apply in real world settings, an application scenario in which the user might interact with the prototype is provided and analyzed.

The subject of research in the article is the processes of constructing explanations in intelligent systems based on the use of causal dependencies. The aim is to develop a hierarchical representation of causal relationships between the actions of an intelligent system to form an explanation of the process of the system's operation with a given degree of generalization or detailing. Representation of the hierarchy of cause-and-effect relationships allows you to form an explanation at a given level of detail using the input data in the form of a temporally ordered sequence of events reflecting the known actions of an intelligent system. Tasks: structuring the hierarchy of cause-and-effect relationships for known variants of the decision-making process in an intelligent information system, considering the temporal ordering of the corresponding actions; development of a model of a multi-level representation of causal dependencies for description for explanations in an intelligent system. The approaches used are: counterfactual analysis of causality, used to describe alternative dependencies for possible decision-making options; linear temporal logic to reflect the temporal aspect of causation. The following results were obtained. A generalized hierarchy of cause-and-effect relationships is highlighted for the known variants of the process of obtaining recommendations in an intelligent information system based on the temporal ordering of the corresponding decision-making actions. A model of hierarchical representation of causal dependencies has been developed to describe explanations in an intellectual system with a given degree of detail. Conclusions. The scientific novelty of the results obtained is as follows. A model of hierarchical representation of time-ordered causal relationships is proposed to describe the explanations of the operation of an intelligent system with a given degree of detail. At the top level of the hierarchy, the model defines a generalized causal relationship between the event of using the input data and the event of the result of the system's operation. This connection describes the current task that the intelligent information system solves. At the lower level, cause-and-effect relationships are set between events sequential in time, between which there are no other events. At intermediate levels of the hierarchical representation, the causal dependencies of pairs of events are determined, between which there are other events. The developed model creates conditions for constructing explanations with a given degree of detailing of the actions of the decision-making process in an intelligent system. The model also provides the ability to describe early and late anticipation of alternative sequences of the decision-making process by describing causal dependencies for events between which there are other events.

In Nigeria, the healthcare sector faces big challenges. Limited access to quality services and not enough resources are major issues. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) could help improve healthcare. But understanding AI predictions is hard, especially in healthcare where transparency is crucial. This article looks at Explainable AI (XAI) to help with this problem in Nigeria. It talks about XAI techniques like feature importance examination, model-agnostic methods (e.g., LIME, SHAP), and interactive visualization tools. These tools can make AI models easier to understand and help with decision-making. A literature review was done to see how XAI can help healthcare in Nigeria. The review included scholarly articles, books, and reports on AI in Nigerian healthcare. We looked at methods from past XAI studies to find common approaches and best practices. XAI offers techniques that make AI models easier to understand in healthcare systems. These techniques include feature importance examination, model-agnostic methods, and interactive visualization tools. Case studies from Nigeria show how XAI is used in areas like disease diagnosis, treatment recommendations, and public health interventions. The findings show the importance of XAI in solving interpretability issues in healthcare AI, especially in places with limited resources like Nigeria. By explaining why AI makes certain predictions, XAI helps healthcare workers make better decisions for Nigerian patients. However, more research is needed to improve XAI techniques for Nigeria’s healthcare system. Policymakers and healthcare leaders should focus on using XAI-enabled systems to drive innovation and improve healthcare outcomes in Nigeria.

Rationale: Existing data processing applications for SP-ICP-ToF-MS, while valuable, have some limitations including restricted multi-sample analysis capabilities, vendor-specific constraints and the lack of efficient visualization approaches. Researchers need flexible, interactive visualization tools that can reveal compositional patterns and enable side-by-side sample comparisons for rapid trend identification and comprehensive data exploration across large datasets. Methodology: we developed IsotopeTrack, an open-source Python-based platform designed specifically for SP-ICP-ToF-MS data processing with cross-platform compatibility (Windows and MacOS). The application implements complete calibration methodologies including transport rate and sensitivity calibrations, three distinct peak detection algorithms (Currie method, Formula C, and compound Poisson log-normal) and element specific parameter optimization. Performance was validated using diverse engineered nanoparticles including TiO₂, CeO₂, metallic alloys (Ni-Fe-Co, Ni-Fe-Cr-Mn, Ni-Fe-Mo), and Au/Ag core-shell particles. The platform features an interactive results canvas with drag and drop capabilities for constructing customized analysis pipelines and it supports multiple file formats. Results: IsotopeTrack successfully analyzed multi-element alloy compositions with a high accuracy. For Ni-Fe-Co alloys, measured mass compositions of ⁶⁰Ni (29.3%), ⁵⁷Fe (55.1%), and ⁵⁹Co (17.7%) closely matched known values of 28% Ni, 55% Fe, and 17% Co. Ultra-uniform gold nanoparticles yielded mean diameters of 52.0±5.0 nm, 29.5±4.4 nm, and 21.1±4.3 nm for nominal 50, 30, and 20 nm particles. The platform generated comprehensive visualizations including elemental correlations, isotopic ratio distributions, ternary diagrams, and composition heatmaps. Processing time was reduced from hours to minutes through parallel processing. The comparison of environmental samples consisting of hundreds of thousands of particles was greatly facilitated. Discussion: IsotopeTrack addressed critical limitations in SP-ICP-ToF-MS data analysis by providing batch processing and interactive visualization tools. Element specific optimization ensured analytical rigor, while dramatically reducing processing time. This open-source framework represents a significant advance in single particle analysis, enabling efficient processing of large datasets essential for nanoparticle characterization in complex systems.