In this study, an artificial neural network application was performed to tell if 18 plates of the same material in different shapes and sizes were cracked or not. The cracks in the cracked plates were of different depth and sizes and were non-identical deformations. This ANN model was developed to detect whether the plates under test are cracked or not, when four plates have been selected randomly from among a total of 18 ones. The ANN model used in the study is a model uniquely tailored for this study, but it can be applied to all systems by changing the weight values and without changing the architecture of the model. The developed model was tested using experimental data conducted with 18 plates and the results obtained mainly correspond to this particular case. But the algorithm can be easily generalized for an arbitrary number of items.

This article investigates the effect of kinesthetic educational game on students' mental computation speed. A Solomon four-group design was used to avoid the influence of pretest-posttest design. In order to determine which grade is appropriate for this game, a pilot study was conducted with 30 students. As for the main study, 123 students participated. First, the group was divided into two as control group and experimental group. The participants of the control group played a computer game while the members of experimental group played a kinesthetic educational game. According to Solomon, using a four-group model the study group was divided into 4 separate groups. The groups were randomly assigned and two of them were applied a pre-test. After the pre-test, in order to measure the attention level of students, a d2 test of attention was applied. The study lasted for 8 weeks in total. At the end of the study, a significant difference was found between the mental computation speeds of the experimental and the control groups. The second significant finding in this study was that there was a difference between the mental computation speeds of students depending on their cognitive characteristics. In other words, students with a low attention level finished the games in a longer period of time in comparison with students who have middle and high attention levels. It was concluded that students with a low attention level have lower mental computation speed. The results suggest that within primary school, Kinect-based exergames can be exploited as effective and motivational learning environments.

This study was performed to investigate the effects of live online course on students’ achievement at distance learning. 63 second-year Distance Computer Education & Instructional Technology students enrolled in this study. At the live online course, the instructor presented physics lessons. Midterm, final and make-up scores were examined after the LOC instruction. Students who are LOCFF (n=32), joined over 50% percent and they had significantly higher scores than students who are LOCFR (n=31), joined below 50% percent to the lessons. According to t-test result, LOCFF group more successfully than LOCFR group (p=.006*).

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) disease, also known as motor neuron disease, is a disease resulting from loss of motor nerve cells in the spinal cord and brain stem region at central nervous system. Researchers can’t find the reason of ALS for certain, however there are a wide variety of risk factors in respect of this disease. This disease has more than one risk factor. Researchers believe that it is resulted from a virus which leads to abnormality in immune system, spoils the structure of DNA and functioning of enzyme system, exhibiting neurotoxic properties. The signals coming to a single arm or leg muscle from upper and lower motor neurons are highly determinative in diagnosis of the disease, although there is not a specific test for diagnosing the ALS disease for certain. Doctors still conduct many tests even though the main symptoms of ALS are the signals coming to muscles. The developments related to gait analysis are used an auxiliary factor in diagnosis and analysis of ALS diseases. In this study, gait signals from control individuals and ALS diseases have been recorded by means of sensors sensitive to the strength under the foot. These signals’ time-amplitude, amplitude spectrum, phase spectrum, average value and variance changes have been analysed. As a result of these inspections, differences of ALS signals from control signals have been identified.