Development Of New Environment Research Articles

Physioland: a motivational complement of physical therapy for patients with neurological diseases

AbstractThe number of patients with mobility constraints is increasing as a result of neurological diseases. From the substantiation of the lost functions recoveries, it was possible to determine that the nervous system is able to reorganize itself expressing its property called neuroplasticity. Physical therapy is the well-known way to encourage and promote this ability. However, repetitive traditional physical therapy exercises may become boring and patients eventually abandon their physiotherapeutic programs. The development of new environments that motivate patients to continue with their treatments may be a suitable alternative or complementary tool. Serious games seems to be the ideal tool to provide them. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to present Physioland, a serious game already developed which can be a motivational complement for the physical therapy of patients with neurological diseases. Physioland is a non-invasive system that uses Image Processing Techniques and Artificial Intelligence to monitor patients and adapts some exercises of traditional physical therapy to electronic game situations. To determine whether Physioland would be motivating and challenging enough to increase a patient's desire to perform the exercises and continue/complete the rehabilitation process the game was tested in a clinical environment using two samples: one with twelve health professionals in the area of physiotherapy and the other with eleven patients with neurological diseases. The research team carried out a questionnaire-based survey. This questionnaire is an adaptation of another one already validated in the literature—the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). For the analysis of the data obtained with the Likert scale, percentages were calculated. The answers to the open questions were subject to a content analysis. The results showed that the developed game, Physioland, proved to be highly motivating for patients at the physiotherapy clinic where it was tested. If the results are similar in other clinics, Physioland, can be used as a good and effective complement to traditional physical therapy for patients with neurological diseases.

Novos usos e desafios para os videojogos: streaming, questões de género e assédio online

Jogar já não significa apenas ficar horas seguidas em frente a um ecrã. Na cultura dos videojogos surgem novos fenómenos em que a nova geração de jogadores quer saber mais sobre os jogos, ver outros jogar, ver os seus fãs, interagir, seguir os ídolos, participar e tornar-se cada vez melhor. Mas há também um lado negro, que tem a ver com questões de assédio, sexismo, agressão e/ou discriminação nos jogos online. Cada vez mais visível, é também cada vez mais desafiada. Muitas das notícias sobre jogos online no passado recente focaram os assédios e a violência online e reforçaram a importância das dimensões da tolerância, diversidade e inclusão. Nesta pesquisa, procuraremos, em primeiro lugar, focar o contexto do desenvolvimento dos novos ambientes e comunidades de jogos online, analisando, designadamente, a expansão e especificidade das grandes plataformas emergentes, para depois nos centrarmos na problemática da discriminação/exclusão e no assédio online.

Investigation and analysis on drug administration of crash truck in basic level general hospitals

Objective To explore the scientificity and rationality of drug administration of crash truck in basic level general hospitals so as to provided references for establishing unified regulations, optimizing drug administration of crash truck and improving rescue efficiency. Methods A total of 12 departments from 3 basic level general hospitals were selected according to purposive sampling and were investigated with questionnaires involving drug allocation, the quantity and variety of first-aid drugs and usage concept of crash truck. Results Among 12 departments from 3 basic level general hospitals, the differences of the quantity of first-aid drugs were large; the number of of first-aid drugs was from 9 to 15 (mean 12); there were 5 departments without standard drug identification of crash truck; there was 1 department with old concept in drug administration of crash truck; there were 12 departments with incomplete drugs and without updating their drug allocation of crush truck for 5 years. Conclusions We should enhancing the scientificity, rationality and standardization of drug administration of crash truck in basic level general hospitals, so as to adapt to the demands of medical development in new environment and ensure the safety of clinical emergency. Key words: First aid; Crash truck; Drug administration; Basic level hospital

Catalogues, conceptual models, data model: the orientations of research and the thematic guidelines in Library and information science

The adoption of new conceptual models for bibliographic and authority data, the latest normative structures of the catalogue, the language of data encoding and their communication in semantic Web, are some of the factors that are transforming library catalogues, cataloguing and management both of bibliographic and authority data. Moreover, these changes are related to the development of new environments of discovery, visualization and dissemination of bibliographic information. The essay proposes an analysis of the elements that underlie such changes carried out also through examining the themes developed by the scientific literature in the same area of interest.

Addressing complexities in self-regulated learning: a focus on contextual factors, contingencies, and dynamic relations

The conceptualization of self-regulated learning (SRL) has been profoundly articulated in recent special issues focused on the similarities and distinctions between SRL and related phenomena like self-regulation, metacognition, and motivation as well as the development of new environments and methods that improve SRL research (Alexander 2008; Azevedo 2005a, 2005b, 2007; Azevedo and Hadwin 2005; Greene and Azevedo 2010; Gress and Hadwin 2010; Jarvela and Hadwin 2013; Molenaar and Jarvela 2014; Perry 2002; Winne and Baker 2013). These special issues have examined how the affordances of (usually computer-based) learning environments can provide the means to observe phenomena described in SRL models and to empirically test theoretical assumptions (Azevedo 2005b; Azevedo and Hadwin 2005; Efklides 2011; Winne and Hadwin 2008; Winne 2010, 2011; Zimmerman and Schunk 2008, 2011). In this special issue, we tighten the focus of this ongoing discussion by focusing on three key features of SRL frameworks: contextual factors, contingencies, and dynamic relations. Contextual factors encompass features of the learning environment, the learner, and their interaction (Efklides 2011). Contingencies refer to instances where one event occurs in the context of another (Winne and Hadwin 2008; Winne 2010, 2011) – a critical assumption of process models of SRL and the basis for research on sequential and temporal characteristics of SRL (Molenaar and Jarvela 2014). Dynamic relations occur when two or more SRL processes influence one another (Winne and Hadwin 2008; Zimmerman and Schunk 2011). The contributors of this special issue are leading international researchers who examine how contextual factors influence SRL (Ben-Eliyahu and Linnenbrink-Garcia 2015; McCardle and Hadwin 2015), how contingent metacognitive processes influence achievement (Binbarasan-Tuysuzoglu and Greene 2015), and how SRL processes dynamically influence one another as learning unfolds (Bernacki et al. 2015; Lichtinger and Kaplan 2015). Two commentaries identify the cross-cutting themes of the special issue (Karabenick and Zusho 2015) and appraise the alignment between the theoretical assumptions, research designs, and Metacognition Learning (2015) 10:1–13 DOI 10.1007/s11409-015-9134-6

The Omegahat Environment: New Possibilities for Statistical Computing

Statistical environments such as S, R, XLisp-Stat, and others have had a dramatic effect on the way we, statistics practitioners, think about data and statistical methodology. However, the possibilities and challenges introduced by recent technological developments and the general ways we use computing conflict with the computational model of these systems. This article explores some of these challenges and identifies the need to support easy integration of functionality from other domains, and to export statistical methodology to other audiences and applications, both statically and dynamically. Existing systems can be improved in these domains with some already implemented extensions (see Section 5). However, the development of a new environment and computational model that exploits modern tools designed to handle many general aspects of these challenges appears more promising as a long-term approach. We present the architecture for such a new model named Omegahat. It lends itself to entirely new statistical computing paradigms. It is highly extensible at both the user and programmer level, and also encourages the development of new environments for different user groups. The Omegahat interactive language offers a continuity between the different programming tasks and levels via optional type checking and seamless access between the interpreted user language and the implementation language, Java. Parallel and distributed computing, network and database access, interactive graphics, and many other aspects of statistical computing are directly accessible to the user as a consequence of this seamless access. We describe the benefits of using Java as the implementation language for the environment and several innovative features of the user-level language which promise to assist development of software that can be used in many contexts. We also outline how this architecture can be integrated with existing environments such as R and S. The ideas are drawn from work within the Omega Project for Statistical Computing. The project provides open-source software for researching and developing next generation statistical computing tools.