Portable DVD Player Research Articles

IntellBatt: The Smart Battery

IntellBatt, a novel multicell battery design, exploits cell characteristics to increase battery lifetime, ensure safe operation, and improve performance. Simulations using Li-ion cells in a portable DVD player show a 22 percent battery lifetime enhancement.

Testing the usability of a portable DVD player and tailored photo instructions with older adult veterans

ABSTRACTDVD-delivered behavioral skills training may help disseminate efficacious treatments to older adults independent of internet access. The present study examined the usability of a portable DVD player alongside iterative revisions of accompanying instructions to be used by older adults in a DVD-delivered behavioral skills treatment study. The sample comprised 20 older adults with a mean age of 69.5 years (SD = 7.3). Behavior observations revealed that three of five steps to play the DVD were completed by more than 90% of participants. Quantitative ratings revealed that 75% could play the DVD easily. Qualitative content analysis further elucidated the usability of the player and the clarity of the instructions. Findings suggest user-centered design of instructional support in DVD-delivered treatments for older adults may be critical to minimizing user error and frustration and increase user experience.

Self-Directed Interactive Video-Based Instruction Versus Instructor-Led Teaching for Myanmar House Surgeons: A Randomized, Noninferiority Trial

To compare self-directed interactive video-based instruction (IVBI) with instructor-led teaching in the acquisition of basic surgical skills by House Surgeons at University of Medicine 1, Yangon. A prospective, 1:1 randomized controlled trial was conducted. Participants were randomized into 2 teaching arms: (1) self-directed IVBI or (2) instructor-led teaching. Self-directed IVBI participants were provided with a portable DVD player that could play, fast forward, rewind, and skip through skills modules. Participants in the instructor-led teaching group were taught in small groups by standardized instructors. Pretesting and posttesting of 1-handed knot tie, 2-handed knot tie, vertical mattress suture, and instrument tie was performed using the Objective Structured Assessment of Technical Skills (OSATS). Students randomized to self-directed IVBI completed an exit survey to assess satisfaction. Demographic data were collected of all participants. University of Medicine 1, Yangon, Myanmar. Fifty participants were randomly selected from 78 eligible House Surgeons who were enrolled in their basic surgery rotation. Demographic characteristics and baseline skills were comparable in participants randomized to IVBI and instructor-led teaching. Mean OSATS score increased from pretest to posttest in both groups (p < 0.001). The mean posttest OSATS score of the IVBI group was 0.72 points below that of the instructor-led teaching group (90% CI: -3.8 to 5.2), with the 90% CI falling below the a priori noninferiority margin, satisfying criteria for noninferiority. More than 90% of students marked either "agree" or "strongly agree" to the following statements on the exit survey: further expansion of IVBI into other skills modules and integration of IVBI into training curriculum. IVBI is noninferior to instructor-led teaching of surgical skills based on OSATS scores. House Surgeons highly rated self-directed IVBI. Self-directed IVBI has the potential to significantly reduce the personnel required for skills teaching and may serve as a long-term learning adjunct in low-resource settings.

Learners’ Attitudes toward the Effectiveness of Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) in L2 Listening Comprehension

Keegan (2003) believes that M (mobile)-learning will provide the future of learning. MALL (Mobile Assisted Language Learning) has just started to move learners and teachers out of the classroom setting into the real world. Using mobile phones, teachers can provide a rich learning environment for learners, although there are still issues that must be considered before they can reach their full potential. Various researches suggest that collaborative speaking and listening skills can be successfully done by mobile phone capabilities. It can be argued that M-learning involves the use of any portable learning materials, including audiobooks, audio-cassettes, audio-CDs, and any portable radios and DVD players. Trifanova et al. (2004, p.3) define mobile devices as “… any device that is small, autonomous and unobtrusive enough to accompany us in every moment”.This research aimed to investigate Iranian EFL learner's attitudes toward the effectiveness of Mobile Assisted Language Learning on their Listening comprehension. The first research question concerns a comparison of the effect of cell-phone based audiobooks versus its traditional counterpart that is CD – ROM/audio cassette based audiobooks, and the second deals with the investigation of Iranian EFL learners’ attitudes toward the technology, to that end MALL questionnaire was distributed to the experimental group, following up interviews with some participants. The results of this study indicated that the experimental group receiving instruction through cell-phone based audiobooks outperformed the control group on their listening comprehension.

Addressing Dental Fear in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders

Dental care is a significant unmet health care need for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Many children with ASD do not receive dental care because of fear associated with dental procedures; oftentimes they require general anesthesia for regular dental procedures, placing them at risk of associated complications. Many children with ASD have a strong preference for visual stimuli, particularly electronic screen media. The use of visual teaching materials is a fundamental principle in designing educational programs for children with ASD. To determine if an innovative strategy using 2 types of electronic screen media was feasible and beneficial in reducing fear and uncooperative behaviors in children with ASD undergoing dental visits. We conducted a randomized controlled trial at Boston Children's Hospital dental clinic. Eighty (80) children aged 7 to 17 years with a known diagnosis of ASD and history of dental fear were enrolled in the study. Each child completed 2 preventive dental visits that were scheduled 6 months apart (visit 1 and visit 2). After visit 1, subjects were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 groups: (1) group A, control (usual care); (2) group B, treatment (video peer modeling that involved watching a DVD recording of a typically developing child undergoing a dental visit); (3) group C, treatment (video goggles that involved watching a favorite movie during the dental visit using sunglass-style video eyewear); and (4) group D, treatment (video peer modeling plus video goggles). Subjects who refused or were unable to wear the goggles watched the movie using a handheld portable DVD player. During both visits, the subject's level of anxiety and behavior were measured using the Venham Anxiety and Behavior Scales. Analyses of variance and Fisher's exact tests compared baseline characteristics across groups. Using intention to treat approach, repeated measures analyses were employed to test whether the outcomes differed significantly: (1) between visits 1 and 2 within each group and (2) between each intervention group and the control group over time (an interaction). Between visits 1 and 2, mean anxiety and behavior scores decreased significantly by 0.8 points (P = .03) for subjects within groups C and D. Significant changes were not observed within groups A and B. Mean anxiety and behavior scores did not differ significantly between groups over time, although group A versus C pairwise comparisons showed a trend toward significance (P = .06). These findings suggest that certain electronic screen media technologies may be useful tools for reducing fear and uncooperative behaviors among children with ASD undergoing dental visits. Further studies are needed to assess the efficacy of these strategies using larger sample sizes. Findings from future studies could be relevant for nondental providers who care for children with ASD in other medical settings.

Health-e People: A Community Collaborative for Health Literacy Awareness

The Great Rivers Partners for Health-e People (GRPHP) health literacy awareness project took place between March 2008 and December 2009 in the counties of southwestern Wisconsin, southeastern Minnesota, and northeastern Iowa. This community collaborative funded by a subcontract from the National Library of Medicine brought health literacy awareness to health care professionals, health professions students, and consumers via Web-based programming and instructor-led sessions. This awareness project also included a qualitative investigation of the use of iPods, Zunes, and portable DVD players for the dissemination of patient education.

IntellBatt: Toward a Smarter Battery

IntellBatt, a novel multicell battery design, exploits cell characteristics to increase battery lifetime, ensure safe operation, and improve performance. Simulations using Li-ion cells in a portable DVD player show a 22 percent battery lifetime enhancement.

Analysis of a Buyer–Seller Watermarking Protocol for Trustworthy Purchasing of Digital Contents

In ubiquitous environments where human users get to access diverse kinds of (often multimedia enabled) services irrespective of where they are, the issue of security is a major concern. Security in this setting encompasses both in the interest of the human users as well as their information and objects that they own. A typical kind of transaction interaction among users and/or machines in these environments is that of exchanging digital objects via purchases and/or ownership transfers, e.g. someone buying a song from iTunes via his iPhone, or downloading either bought or rented movies onto a portable DVD player. Here, there is a need to provide trustworthy protection of the rights of both parties; i.e. the seller's copyright needs to be protected against piracy, while on the other hand it has been highlighted in literature the need to protect innocent buyers from being framed. Indeed, if either party cannot be assured that his rights are protected when he is involved in transactions within such environments, he would shy away and instead prefer for instance the more conventional non-digital means of buying and selling. And therefore without active participation from human users and object owners it is difficult to fully kick off the actual realization of intelligent environments. Zhang et al. recently proposed a buyer---seller watermarking protocol without a trusted third party based on secret sharing. While it is a nice idea to eliminate the need of a trusted third party by distributing secret shares between the buyer and the seller such that neither party has knowledge of the fingerprint embedded in a content, we show that it is possible for a buyer to remove his part of the fingerprint from the content he bought. This directly disproves the piracy tracing property claimed by the protocol. In fact, since piracy tracing is one of the earliest security applications of watermarking schemes, it raises doubts as to the soundness of the design of this protocol.

The Great American Staycation and the Risk of Stillness

The Great American Staycation and the Risk of Stillness

Circulation on the Go–Implementing Wireless Laptop Circulation in a State University Academic Library

SUMMARY In 2004, Sampson-Livermore Library at The University of North Carolina at Pembroke, began circulating laptops to its patrons. After a small pilot project, full-scale implementation occurred and the service proved to be very popular. Policies and procedures were adjusted at several steps along the way to accommodate lessons learned from the circulation desk. Sampson-Livermore Library now circulates laptops, iBooks, portable DVD players, and MP3 players, in addition to peripheral equipment. Circulation of library equipment has skyrocketed, as this has become one of the library's signature services.

The Intra-rater Reliability of Nine Content-Validated Technical Skill Assessment Instruments (TSAI) for Athletic Taping Skills.

Objective: To establish the intra-rater reliability of nine content-validated Technical Skill Assessment Instruments (TSAI) for the skills of athletic taping. Setting: University of Calgary. Subjects: Canadian Certified Athletic Therapists, CAT(C), with a mean ± SD of 9.6 ± 10.8 years as a CAT(C), 7.8 ± 10.9 years as a Supervisory Athletic Therapist, 8.5 ± 12.0 years teaching athletic taping skills, and 9.2 ± 11.5 years evaluating athletic taping skills. Design: Six Certified Athletic Therapists from Canada completed the repetitive evaluations of nine different athletic taping scenarios. Each rater evaluated the performance of a student therapist taping a standardized patient while using the appropriate TSAI designed for each athletic taping scenario. Evaluations occurred once per month for five successive months. Raters viewed the performances on a portable DVD player at a central testing site. Measurements: The percent scores of 270 completed TSAIs were used for analysis. ICC (3, k) was used to quantify the intra-rater reliability. We used a One-way ANOVA with repeated measures to determine if mean differences across testing months existed within raters. Significance was achieved with α = 0.05. Results: ICC values for the nine TSAIs ranged from 0.65 to 0.95 with Ankle 3 and Thumb 2 achieving the lowest and highest ICC values respectively. One-way ANOVA with repeated measures did not provide significant mean differences between testing months within each rater. Conclusion: The nine TSAIs possess substantial to almost perfect reliability with seven TSAIs appropriate for summative evaluations and two appropriate for formative evaluations.

Evaluation of a Portable DVD Player and System of Least Prompts to Self-Prompt Cooking Task Completion by Young Adults With Moderate Intellectual Disabilities

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a portable DVD player plus the system of least prompts (SLP) for DVD player use as a self-prompting device to teach cooking tasks to three young adults with moderate intellectual disabilities. A multiple probe design across three cooking tasks and replicated across three students was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the portable DVD player to prompt completion of multistep tasks. Results indicate that the self-prompting, portable DVD player with the SLP was effective in teaching multistep cooking tasks that were maintained over time.

Film in Air: Airspace, In-Flight Entertainment, and Nontheatrical Distribution

Film in Air: Airspace, In-Flight Entertainment, and Nontheatrical Distribution Stephen Groening On 21 May 1932 Los Angeles radio station KHJ transmitted a segment of a motion picture as a television signal for five minutes to a Western Air Express transport plane nearly ten miles away. The experiment was part of a proposed plan to transmit weather information to planes using the emergent technology of television. In this early application of in-flight screened entertainment, the visual communication technology was intended to further the efficiency of transportation technologies. Without accurate weather reports, goods (including human labor) could not be delivered safely and in a timely manner. However, if the experiment was simply to be used as a weather information system, it is unclear why Western Air Express and KHJ broadcast a feature-length film to test the technology. This convergence of entertainment and aviation technologies was a telling indication of a growing alliance between Hollywood and commercial air travel. Although the film (starring Loretta Young) was broadcast without sound, the engineers told reporters, who constituted the majority of those on the plane, that it would require only a small adjustment to also transmit sound, pointing toward the possibility of entertainment applications.1 The experiment demonstrated American technical prowess within the ongoing modern project: to eliminate barriers of physical distance and lay claim to the new kinds of spaces created by this project. The television signals were received on a moving vehicle, occupying the relatively new spatial category of “airspace” (a term barely twenty years old). As the plane itself defied the normal rules of territorial contiguity, flying over Los Angeles but not being in Los Angeles, the transnational communication apparatus of Hollywood became seemingly ethereal. Hollywood, ever ready to take the spotlight for new advancements in entertainment, now took flight to ensure its dominance over the dispersal of cultural content across new spatial categories—the airspace above the world stage. The introduction of new screen technologies, such as seatback screens on airplanes, has allowed Hollywood to multiply its exhibition sites and circulate its product into places and spaces it could not previously access. Film’s standing as an essential part of contemporary culture depends on the ability of film exhibition technologies to transform places into movie theaters (or approximations thereof). Furthermore, the introduction of these new exhibition technologies opens up additional sources for the film industry’s revenue stream. In-flight entertainment exemplifies the film industry’s intent to create and reach audiences rather than waiting for audiences to find the industry’s product. The film industry uses these new exhibition spaces (from which persons often find themselves unable to exit) to promote, market, and sell product. Film is thus no longer part of a menu of entertainment and leisure but a constant, sometimes distracting background. On many airplanes films appear on screens unbidden, ready to become the central focus of attention if a passenger chooses to listen in via headphones. Changes in the field of film studies indicate a growing concern and awareness of this multiplicity of new cinematic spaces: movies on television, films on computers, portable DVD players, seatback screens in minivans, and handheld digital media players. From the millennium issue of the journal Screen to the adoption of the initial “M” by the Society for Cinema Studies in 2002, the discipline has increasingly recognized that moving image culture is no longer locatable in the movie theater or on the silver screen. This can also be seen in the emergence of PhD programs, such as Moving Image Studies (Georgia State University) and Screen Cultures (Northwestern University), that by their very names proclaim “film” to be a limited and perhaps obsolete demarcation of the presence [End Page 4] of moving pictures in contemporary culture. Alongside this effort to find motion pictures in myriad nontheatrical places (a kind of “ambient cinema,” to paraphrase Anna McCarthy) is a turn toward “convergence culture” (to borrow from Henry Jenkins), in which motion pictures are seen as but one choice in a menu of digital entertainment options, a single facet of a franchised and remediated property—or merely a piece of intellectual property that converges with other cultural commodities in a single piece of...

E-movie industry and its roles on traditional movie entertainment modes

With home movie entertainment sales increasing, mobile electronic devices such as portable DVD players, IPods, smart video phones and inexpensive downloadable web-based options are becoming more popular; customers now have more options than the traditional modes of movie entertainment. Companies like Netflix are offering a large selection of movies at a low price, and the ability to strip DVDs to blank CDs or blank DVDs, the e-movie industry has increased competition forcing movie theatres to lower ticket prices, file for bankruptcy and/or merge with other movie theatres to remain competitive. There is an increasing correlation between these electronic initiatives in the various types of movie media and technology used and the decrease in the traditional movie theatre industry. Furthermore, in general, people increasingly prefer the convenience of watching movies in the comfort of their own homes with state of the art technology (surround sound systems, HDTV, Plasma TV, TiVo, DVD Recorders/Burners, to name a few). There have been many threats to the movie theatre industry, but with technology becoming cheaper and easier to use, it may spell the end of traditional movie going as a preferred entrainment vehicle.

Polymer electrolyte fuel cell mini power unit for portable application

This paper describes the design, realisation and test of a power unit based on a polymer electrolyte fuel cell, operating at room temperature, for portable application. The device is composed of an home made air breathing fuel cell stack, a metal hydride tank for H 2 supply, a dc–dc converter for power output control and a fan for stack cooling. The stack is composed by 10 cells with an active surface of 25 cm 2 and produces a rated power of 15 W at 6 V and 2 A. The stack successfully runs with end-off fed hydrogen without appreciable performance degradation during the time. The final assembled system is able to generate 12 W at 9.5 V, and power a portable DVD player for 3 h in continuous. The power unit has collected about 100 h of operation without maintenance.

Theatre Squared: Theatre History in the Age of Media

Theatre Squared:Theatre History in the Age of Media Sarah Bay-Cheng (bio) Recordings deal with concepts through which the past is reevaluated, and they concern notions about the future which will ultimately question even the validity of evaluation. —Glenn Gould, "The Prospects of Recording" In 1964, Canadian pianist Glenn Gould quit live performance in favor of perfecting recordings of his performances. In an essay published two years later, "The Prospects of Recording" (1966), Gould explained his decision by predicting that in the next century, the live concert would reach "extinction." Far from a lamentable course of events, Gould embraced the end of the live performance as the opportunity for "a more cogent experience [of music] than is now possible" (47). The end of the live concert may never come, but Gould's comments are eerily prescient of contemporary performance and its reliance on recording technology: first film, then video, and, more recently, digital recording. Much attention has been paid to the impact of these technologies on live theatre production and reception, but little criticism to date has considered the impact of recording technology on theatre history, on the archive in the making. And yet, moving images on screens have become a dominant, arguably the dominant, mode of viewing throughout our increasingly mediatized culture. From portable DVD players to video iPods to cellular phones, modern culture communicates onscreen. This essay is a preliminary consideration of the impact of recording technology on the study of theatre history, and a proposal for a critical means for assessing the phenomenon and effect of recorded, or mediated, theatre. "Mediated theatre" may be broadly defined as any theatrical performance originally created for live performance (that is, live actors in visual proximity to a live audience, although this distinction is hardly absolute) and subsequently recorded onto any visually reproducible medium, including film, videotape, or digital formats, presented as two-dimensional moving images on screens. There is a danger, of course, in too broadly grouping various recording technologies. Variations in recording processes (collaborative, individual), apparatuses (celluloid, analog videotape, digital devices), and receptions (public projections, private viewings) have discrete histories, methods, and results, not to mention very different modes of viewing in social, economic, and cultural contexts. While undoubtedly distinct, these media share certain characteristics of image construction, conventions of time and space, and mutual reliance on screens that we may usefully juxtapose against embodied performance in the theatre. At the risk of oversimplifying, then, I would like to introduce a discussion of mediated theatre, broadly construed, for the purposes of understanding the process of capturing live performance in moving images, and the methods by which these images within the frame of the screen—the theatre squared—can be used in theatre history analysis and teaching. The Rise of Mediated Theatre Perhaps the most obvious influence of visual-recording technology on theatre history is the emergence and growth of the moving-image archive, an expanding collection of mediated-performance representations that includes film, television broadcasts, rehearsal videotapes, documentaries, [End Page 37] and digitally recorded productions. These collections are diverse, including institutional collections in libraries as well as private video and film collections. The professional organization, the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA), asserts that such an archive will eventually provide the same archival value as textual artifacts currently do. According to the AMIA web site (amianet.org), "[a]s our culture is increasingly shaped by visual images in the digital age, historians may soon rely on moving images as much as on the printed word to understand 21st-century culture." Within theatre studies, the use of videos is already widespread. Drama anthologies, for example, increasingly list not only examples of further reading, but also video resources for plays within them.1 Many theatre and performance classes—from Shakespeare to contemporary performance art—use videos to illustrate aspects of theatre performance. Given the limitations of theatre productions in many locations, mediated theatre is often the best way to expose students to a range of performance traditions, styles, and genres. Even within a major theatre city, one cannot always ensure access to a Greek tragedy, a Restoration play, and Bunraku puppetry in the course of a single term, so video...

Low temperature polysilicon chemical vapor deposition system for thin film transistor liquid crystal diode

Polysilicon thin film transistor (TFT)-based displays are increasingly found in cell phones, mobile communicators, PDAs, portable DVD players, and mobile computers because they have high resolution and low power consumption. The AKT plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition system made by Applied Materials is used to deposit multilayer dielectric films including precursor low-hydrogen-content amorphous silicon for manufacturing these displays. The polysilicon film is converted from an amorphous precursor film by an excimer laser annealing process. Production of a good quality polysilicon precursor film requires that the hydrogen content of the film be controlled below 2%. Achieving low hydrogen content requires uniform treatment at high temperature (500±10 °C) after deposition. This article describes the design and performance of the large, high temperature heat chamber integrated in a cluster-tool-based deposition system for both preheat and postannealing of the substrate. [Q. Shang, J. K. Kardokus, and A. Hosokawa, U.S. patent pending (Dec. 2000).]