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In interactive narratives, the progress of the story is not pre-determined by the author. In other words, the player takes an active role in deciding how the story should unfold. To design an immersive interactive narrative, authors have to deal with an inevitable degree of complexity. Therefore, developing authoring tools to help authors create more complex interactive narratives is valuable. In this regard, different authoring systems have been proposed in the past. However, only a few of them are designed atop a rigorous formal foundation. One of the less explored potentials of such a foundation is improving narrative validation capabilities. In this paper, we introduce a novel framework for authoring interactive narratives. This framework provides a formal foundation for modelling and validating interactive narratives. We report on two case studies to show the capacity of the proposed framework. Also, we conducted a user study to examine the proposed framework with regard to narrative debugging and validation. Case studies demonstrated the capacity of the proposed framework for modelling different types of narratives. Moreover, the user study showed that the proposed framework facilitates assertion checking and debugging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem-solving is placed at top of the ten most important life skills recommended by World Economic Forum. Serious game has been one of the dominant tools for educating people in different subjects over the last 10 years. This study aims to critically analyse previous empirical studies conducted on Problem-Solving Serious Games (PSSG). Using Constant Comparative Method (CCM) framework, 737 studies in this area are listed; and after applying several filters, 36 studies are refined and finally chosen. The analysis shows that serious games not alone improve people's problem-solving ability, it also positively impacts on their problem-solving motivation, problem-solving measurement ability, critical thinking, and learning attitude. However, there is a lack of pedagogists' engagement with PSSG studies. As a result, those studies suffered from lack of educational rationale behind and lack of right direction in choosing their participants, research methods, focus, genre, and expected outputs. Theoretical and practical implications of this critical analysis are outlined at the end of this paper, shedding light on the future directions of PSSG studies. the main conclusions of this study are as following: 1. An inter-disciplinary approach led by pedagogists is needed to design, develop, and examine PSSGs effectively. 2. The over-optimistic viewpoint about serious games in general and PSSGs in specific should be moderated by looking more closely at the negative marginal and side effects of implementing these games on gamers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The released software systems still involve some faults, for which debugging becomes necessary. On the one hand, manual software debugging remains an arduous, time-consuming, and expensive task. On the other hand, effective software debugging is organized around motivated and patient developers. In this paper, a novel approach, namely Gamifault, is provided to make debugging more attractive and enjoyable. Particularly, the objective of Gamifault is to make the developer more curious to proceed debugging, that is fault localization and program repair, enthusiastically. To achieve this objective, the concepts and potentials of gamification are adapted to the typical tasks of software debugging. In particular, Gamifault makes use of an existing fault localization technique to determine the likelihood to each statement may be faulty. Based on the likelihood, the developer then attempts to find the exact fault location and fix the fault. Next, Gamifault reacts to the developer with a gamified success rate. That is, it shows the number of test cases that have been passed on the modified program. This process is repeated until the program passes on every given test case. To evaluate Gamifault, a prototype web-based tool was implemented in Java that targets faulty software programs. Then, 16 developers were asked to employ gamified and non-gamified versions of the tool in their debugging activities on 46 subject programs taken from the Code4Bench suite of programs. Developers could successfully debug 7 and 95 faulty programs using the non-gamified and gamified tools, respectively. In addition, the gamified tool helped developers debug the faulty program in less than two minutes on average. These results suggest that Gamifault offers advantages over existing debugging systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The management of data on coronary artery disease (CAD) plays a significant role in controlling the disease and reducing the mortality of patients. The diseases registries facilitate the management of data., Objective: This study aimed to identify the attributes of hospital-based CAD registries with a focus on key registry processes., Method: In this systematic review, we searched for studies published between 2000 and 2019 in PubMed, Scopus, EMBASE and ISI Web of Knowledge. The search terms included coronary artery disease, registry and data management (MeSH terms) at November 2019. Data gathering was conducted using a data extraction form, and the content of selected studies was analysed with respect to key registry processes, including case finding, data gathering, data abstracting, data quality control, reporting and patient follow-up., Results: A total of 17,604 studies were identified in the search, 55 of which were relevant studies that addressed the 21 registries and were selected for the analysis. Results showed that the most common resources for case finding included admission and discharge documents, physician's reports and screening results. Patient follow-up was mainly performed through direct visits or via telephone calls. The key attributes used for checking the data quality included data accuracy, completeness and definition., Conclusion: CAD registries aim to facilitate the assessment of health services provided to patients. Putting the key registry processes in place is crucial for developing and implementing the CAD registry. The data quality control, as a CAD registry process, requires developing standard tools and applying appropriate data quality attributes., Implications: The findings of the current study could lay the foundation for successful design and development of CAD registries based on the key registry processes for effective data management.