Page Reader Research Articles

Reasons why we read blogs and memorial pages of people who lost a child. Life motives of emotional rubberneckers

Researchers have been interested in the subject of accompanying individuals who experienced a child’s terminal illness and death, sharing their grief online. Using The Reiss Motivation Profile and qualitative methods, the authors identified the life motives of emotional rubberneckers–grief blog and memorial page readers. Key reasons for the regular behavior of this kind are found: interest in the protagonist’s health, compassion, will to help, and sense of bonding. Such activity provides support to the respondents. Readers’ important life motives include the substantial need to care for their loved ones, to be needed, emotional stability, and a low need for power.

Measuring the Accessibility of the U.S. State Government Web Sites

Web accessibility has become an important issue since the dramatic rise in the use of the Web. Web accessibility deals with overcoming barriers users with disabilities face when trying to access information on Web sites. The U.S. has passed laws relating to Web accessibility to improve the usability of the Internet for disabled users. Technical advancements have improved assistive tools such as page readers for users with disabilities, but accessibility requires more than assistive tools. Web page design causes many accessibility problems. This study examines the accessibility of the home pages of the official government Web sites of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, based on the assumption that government Web sites should be an example for other organizations to follow regarding Web accessibility. However, nearly a third of the home pages tested did not meet the most fundamental requirements for Web accessibility. Fixes for many of these accessibility problems require rather minor adjustments to underlying page code.

Joint Analysis of Static and Dynamic Importance in the Eye-Tracking Records of Web Page Readers

Heat maps highlight cumulative, static importance in eye-tracking records, while network analysis helps to elucidate dynamic importance from transitional relations. The present study was designed to perform both analyses in the same conceptual framework, i.e., network representation. For this purpose, heat maps comprising 5 × 5 segments were overlaid with networks, both of which were produced from the eye-tracking records of 20 subjects who read 10 top web pages that were classified into three layout types. The heat of the segments was graded on the basis of five percentile scores, whereas the core-peripheral nodes were identified by the agreement of centrality and ranking indices. The congruence between the two types of importance was generally good at the node level and the community levels. Additional findings included a) mixed patterns of the sustained fixations (i.e., loops) within the total fixations, and b) an increase in reciprocity as the network scope was narrowed to communities and then to the core neighborhoods.

Même le silence a une fin by Ingrid Betancourt

through their use of “Frenchness” these works allowed filmmakers in both countries the conviction of sharing cinema’s cultural tradition. Chapter 2, “The Cannes Film Festival and the Marketing of Cosmopolitanism,” traces the French festival’s post-war development, complete with press, paparazzi, and stars. Bolstered by France’s longstanding history of investment in cultural cosmopolitanism, Cannes built itself into the premier international venue for screening and marketing films. Hollywood participated willingly, hoping to gain markets and influence; and the American presence, in turn, reinforced French prestige in the international film world. Chapters 3 and 4 analyze two notable elements of the rising international film culture that were promoted through the Cannes Festival and had ramifications in both French and American industries. In “And France Created Bardot” Schwartz examines the case of BB’s new style, international celebrity, locating its origins in press/paparazzi photos that were responsible for transforming her vivacious, sexy spontaneity into a representation of current youth culture. Consequently, Bardot became famous less as a French actress and more as a popular icon of “Frenchness”—a commodity that could be successfully exported internationally, as happened in Et Dieu créa la femme, a film more popular in the United States than in France. “The Cosmopolitan Film: From Around the World in 80 Days to Making Movies Around the World” looks at films, many dreamed up or launched at Cannes, that used a multinational production team to treat subjects, themes, and plots emphasizing transnational rather than national experiences and perspectives. Schwartz’s discussions of specific film images in relation to extra-filmic factors offer highly perceptive readings, for example, the connections she draws between John Huston’s Moulin Rouge and fin-de-siècle French art, or Jean-Luc Godard’s Le mépris and the death of “Frenchness” films, or Cannes photos, celebrity, and the star system. It’s So French contains copious notes, an extensive bibliography, and a generous number of illustrations from a variety of sources. An introduction and conclusion propose a helpful “satellite” view of the territory covered. Quibbles: proof-reading could have been tighter (a couple of passages confuse due to the apparent omission of words), Notre-Dame is consistently spelled with an ô, and a photo identified as a Morris column does not appear to be one. In sum, Schwartz’s work represents a noteworthy addition to the history of international film culture. University of Idaho, emerita Joan M. West Society and Culture edited by Marie-Christine Koop BETANCOURT, INGRID. Même le silence a une fin. Paris: Gallimard, 2010. ISBN 978-2-07012664 -4. Pp. 692. 24,90 a. This is the latest in a series of memoirs that describe the tales of survival of hostages in the Colombian jungle. Abducted by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) while campaigning for president, Ingrid Betancourt endured the horrors of captivity for six and a half years. Her Franco-Colombian citizenship helped her gain international attention and transformed her into “un trophée 376 FRENCH REVIEW 85.2 entre les mains de la guérilla” (274). Betancourt begins with the narration of one of her several failed escapes, running not only from angry guerrillas following her steps but more so from the fatal perils of the jungle: tigers, tarantulas, giant ants, poisonous snakes, rivers infested with anacondas, piranhas, and caimans. After the first chapter, the book continues more or less chronologically with eighty-one short chapters. Through every page readers witness her horrific journey of long forced marches, camps surrounded by barbed fences, and terrifying moments when the hostages find themselves between the FARC’s clutches and the constant bombardment of the Colombian army. Betancourt’s universe is filled with contrasts as she describes her companions, the guerrillas, and the jungle. She portrays her friend and former vice-presidential candidate Clara Rojas as cold and intolerant and refers to her most times as ma compagne, purposely omitting her name. Yet, in other instances, Betancourt writes of tender episodes when they need each other and hold hands. Other contrasts in her relationships with fellow hostages go from romantic encounters and inseparable partnerships with some to profound discord with others. Tensions among them reached the...

A Practice of the Simple Learning Management System

Recently, the LMS ( Learning Management System) of the Blackboard, the WebCt, the Moodle and the Wiki etc. are utilized at the time of e-learning execution. We constructed a simple learning management system with the PukiWiki which is a derivative edition of the Wiki. In this system, the page which the Web page reader is perusing can be edited freely. Moreover, not only a teacher can equally treat the functions used before easily, but a student can create and expand his pages freely. We applied this system to the programming exercise with Java language. When students present a subject, the certainty and convenience are verified since the process are automatically recorded with time.

Web accessibility technology at the IBM Tokyo Research Laboratory

This paper provides an overview of Web accessibility technologies developed at the IBM Tokyo Research Laboratory. Home Page Reader provides an easy and comfortable way for the blind to read Web pages. Transcoding technology solves problems that arise when a voice browser, such as Home Page Reader, reads Web pages. It also offers more comfortable ways for visually impaired people and senior citizens to read Web pages. Accessibility Designer, the main focus of this paper, allows page designers to learn about disabilities and to create more accessible and usable Web pages at authoring time. It has two modes: a low-vision mode and a blind mode. The low-vision mode simulates the perception of people with low vision and detects inaccessible parts in the target page. The blind mode visualizes the usability of a voice browser for the target page and detects accessibility and usability problems. Accessibility Observer makes it easier for Web developers to detect accessibility problems.

Web accessibility technology at the IBM Tokyo research laboratory

This paper provides an overview of Web accessibility technologies developed at the IBM Tokyo Research Laboratory. Home Page Reader provides an easy and comfortable way for the blind to read Web pag...

New patrons: new challenges

The information age has brought libraries an entire new group of potential patrons, the so‐called “print disabled”. For many librarians, retooling to keep up with the invasion of digitized information seems frightening and overwhelming. The thought of having to take that a further step and become familiar with the specialized hardware and software that people with disabilities use to adapt the computer seems like asking too much. The goal of this column is to persuade librarians that taking on this new task will be a challenge and opportunity rather than another burden. A number of tools and products are discussed. This time the focus is on IBM’s Home Page Reader.

A Full Custom Integrated Circuit for Document Analysis Systems

This paper describes the architecture and design methodology used to produce a new custom IC intended for automatic document analysis. The circuit implements the entire operative part of a dedicated microprogrammed processor for the next generation of page readers which include items such as Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and different codings for graphics and images. The chip provides a wide range of powerful functions, performing up to three operations per cycle. It includes about 10 000 transistor sites and occupies an area of 20 mm/sup 2/. A standard 6-/spl mu/m NMOS technology was used. Typical clock frequency is 2 MHz. The layout was obtained using a highly regular architecture and some automatically generated structures. New CAD tools provided an efficient and short design procedure.

Automatic Feature Design for Optical Character Recognition Using an Evolutionary Search Procedure

An automatic evolutionary search is applied to the problem of feature extraction in an OCR application. A performance measure based on feature independence is used to generate features which do not appear to suffer from peaking effects [17]. Features are extracted from a training set of 30 600 machine printed 34 class alphanumeric characters derived from British mail. Classification results on the training set and a test set of 10 200 characters are reported for an increasing number of features. A 1.01 percent forced decision error rate is obtained on the test data using 316 features. The hardware implementation should be cheap and fast to operate. The performance compares favorably with current low cost OCR page readers.

Statistical contribution on symptomatic dry eye

Optical mark page reader forms to establish the case history were statistically evaluated with regard to the question 'Do you often have the feeling of having sand in the eye. Out of a total of 5,833 patients, 684 (11.7%) answered this question with 'yes'. Women stated with 15.1% relatively more often than men with 9.7% this clinical symptom. Of these 684 patients who subjectively complained of feeling of sand, 241 had an ophthalmological examination. In 92 patients (38.2%) the Bengal-Rosa 1% test was specifically performed due to the specific past history and the clinical symptoms stated on questions by the physician; in all cases signs of a keratoconjunctivitis sicca of different degree were found by slit-lamp microscopy, i.e., at least 4.5% keratoconjunctivitis sicca patients on our whole collective can be expected. The result of a thorough examination in these 92 patients (39 men and 53 women) with ophthalmologically confirmed keratoconjunctivitis sicca showed that in 25 (of 53) women there was an imbalance of the sex hormones. Besides degenerative diseases due to age, diseases of the connective tissue and those caused by an auto immune mechansim were found.

Optical Scanning for Large-Scale Studies

Data reporting the experience with an optical mark page reader is presented (IBM 1231Ν1). Information from 52,000 persons was gathered in seven countries, decentrally coded and centrally processed. Reader performance rates (i.e. sheets read per hour, sheet rejection rates, reading error rates) and costs (coding, verification, reading, etc.) are given.

The IBM 1975 Optical Page Reader Part II: Video Thresholding System

An adaptive video thresholding system is used in the Page Reader to minimize recognition failures due to contrast and line width variation. The main threshold operator is a linear function of the average contrast over a specified area. Adjustments to the threshold level are made by circuits that compute the average line widthin a character, and by circuits that filter out spatial noise in the vicinity of the character. The different types of print quality distortions predominant in typewriter printing and business machine printing are handled by switching between different sets of threshold operators.

The IBM 1975 Optical Page Reader Part I: System Design

The IBM 1975 Optical Page Reader, specially built for the Social Security Administration, reads over 200 fonts from quarterly employer reports printed by electric and manual typewriters, business machines, and high-speed printers. Since the SSA has no control over the means used by employers to prepare the reports, many variations in print quality present. This paper discusses the problems involved in planning and developing a system to read these reports and summarizes the design of the specialized video signal processing circuits and the character recognition logic that are used in the system. Two companion papers treat the latter topics in more detail. Also discussed in the paper is a management information system that permitted detailed analysis of experimental data and accelerated the development process.

A Simplified Data-Recording Method

A versatile and inexpensive procedure for recording source-data was successfully developed and tested April-October, 1965. The system consists of employing overlay templates with standard, 800-position Optical Mark Page Reader forms, and recording data in such a manner that they are immediately convertible to machine language on mmI's 1230 series Optical Mark Page Readers. Principal advantages of the template approach over traditional source-data recording methods include: (1) its versatility, convenience, and adaptability; (2) a reduction in initial cost because necessary materials are inexpensive; and (3) a substantial reduction in the cost and time required to key punch and verify numeric information, or to organize and tabulate data by hand. To tabulate and analyze large volumes of numeric data is potentially burdensome for wildlife researchers, managers, and administrators. Frequently, the bulk of collected information causes long delay in reporting results and in some cases results are never interpreted and reported. Usual techniques for alleviating this difficulty provide for recording data at their source on specially printed cards (Marksense or Port-a-punch) or forms in such a manner that they are directly convertible to machine language, or for punching source information into standard 80-column service cards. Either of these methods can be somewhat complex, time-consuming, and expensive. For long-term, routine investigations, however, particularly when numerous types of information categories are required and major recording-format changes are unlikely, the preprinted card or form is often appropriate. In many field research applications it is desirable to be able to alter periodically the recording format as dictated by study results and objectives and unanticipated exigencies. Hence, studies were conducted between April and October, 1965, to develop a more versatile and inexpensive system for recording numeric data in order to facilitate machine tabulation and analysis. Procedures developed involve use of overlay templates with standard, 800-position Optical Mark Page Reader forms which serve as input to International Business Machine Corporation's Optical Mark Page Reader machines.1 Two basic types of Optical Mark Page Reader machines, the 1231 and 1232, can be used to process information recorded on Optical Page Reader forms. The 1231 acts as an on-line input system to data processsing devices such as IM's 1401, 1440, and 1460 computers. If desired, the computer can be used to print-list as the sheets are by the 1231 and, at the same time, information can be punched into 80-column service cards by a card-punch unit. The 1232 machine operates only with a card punch. Thus, the choice of machine combinations depends on their availability, the availability of appropriate computer programs, and the type of results sought. Source documents are read by the Page Reader machines at a maximum of 2,000 sheets per hour. Actual throughput speed of the 1231 depends on computer programming, feed mode, and the method of grouping information on the forms. 1 Reference to IBM does not constitute endorsement by the Federal Government.

Automation of Public Health Nurse Reports

THE ACCELERATION of change in medical practice places a growing burden on the public health nurse to use the new techniques and procedures that will maintain and improve efficiency, thus enhancing the care of patients. Simplification of administrative tasks frees time for professional responsibilities, and when this benefit can be spread throughout the entire organizational structure of public health nursing, improvements may be significant. The development of a new reporting system for public health nurses in New York State (excluding New York City) is aimed at simplifying and reducing routine paperwork. The system also expedites preparation of reports for various administrative levels and signals important changes in parameters of patient care rapidly and meaningfully. In the New York State system there is but one basic form, used at the staff-nurse level by all participant,s. This form is unique in many respects. Almost every duty or function performed by the public health nurse is recorded on the simplified design, which is more comprehensive than any of the five different forms used previously in the manual data system. Information is recorded by placing lines in designated spaces adjacent to specified printed items (see chart). These marks are made with a standard lead pencil. A single sheet is prepared for each visit and each activity performed during the day. The forms are collected at suitable intervals and mailed to the computer center at Roswell Park Memorial Institute, Buffalo, where forms for the entire State are processed. To ease the burden of scheduling for machine processing, local departments send the completed material at no less than weekly intervals. In some areas where the volume of collected data is unusually high, packages are sent almost daily. Every effort is made to transmit the final material for each month shortly after conclusion of the reporting period so that accurate summaries can be prepared promptly. At the computer center the sheets are processed as received at the rate of approximately 5,000 per day. Each is passed through an IBM 1232 optical mark page reader, a machine which transfers the data recorded on the form to punched cards. No manual key punching is necessary. Incomplete or ambiguous reports are rejected automatically. Obvious errors are corrected at the computer center; other rejects are returned to the nurse for reprocessing. The cards are read by a digital computer (IBM 1401), and the information is stored on magnetic tape. At the conclusion of each month the magnetic tape, containing all reports for the period, is passed through the computer once again, and reports relative to the activity of each nurse are prepared. This information is sent to supervisors in the loca,l health departments through the distribution system of the New York State Department of Health. At this level the utilization varies considerably, depending upon the organizational relationships within the local departments. Usually, the report reaches the individual nurse, providing comparable statistics for monthly planning and scheduling. New personnel can be guided to some extent by reviewing the reports of predecessors in the same assignments. More adequate and realistic distribution of the All the authors are with the New York State Department of Health. Miss Parker is director of nursing services, Albany, Dr. Ausman is executive director, Health Research, Inc., Roswell Park Memorial Institute, Buffalo, and Mr. Ovedovitz is chief, computer study team, Albany.