Public Access Systems Research Articles

Diminished State Space Theory of Human Aging.

Many new technologies, such as smartphones, computers, or public-access systems (like ticket-vending machines), are a challenge for older adults. One feature that these technologies have in common is that they involve underlying, partially observable, structures (state spaces) that determine the actions that are necessary to reach a certain goal (e.g., to move from one menu to another, to change a function, or to activate a new service). In this work we provide a theoretical, neurocomputational account to explain these behavioral difficulties in older adults. Based on recent findings from age-comparative computational- and cognitive-neuroscience studies, we propose that age-related impairments in complex goal-directed behavior result from an underlying deficit in the representation of state spaces of cognitive tasks. Furthermore, we suggest that these age-related deficits in adaptive decision-making are due to impoverished neural representations in the orbitofrontal cortex and hippocampus.

Building Resilient Communities: The Environmental Observatory for Mining Projects and Climate Change Indicators

Public environmental information can improve industry performance, reduce environmental conflicts, and foster informed citizenship. The latter is directly linked to resilience because it is a “process that enables people to learn together, support experimentation, and increase the potential for (social and technological) innovation”. Importantly, the transparency and disclosure of environmental information alone do not have the desired impact; the general public may have access to information but not understand the content. It is necessary to reframe the technical language of information to reach broader stakeholder understanding. The Environmental Observatory for Mining Projects is an applied research project that aims to provide a public information access system for diverse stakeholders. It integrates data from various public services and makes them available to a variety of stakeholders, including the general public, through a web server and application that facilitate accessibility and understanding by using the co-creation methodology for public services. As a result of the project, the authors identified 25 indicators, six of which relate to climate change, including greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, air pollution, hazardous waste, and tailing deposit locations. These indicators are relevant for decision making through the combined knowledge of public policies, information priorities on the impacts and vulnerabilities of climate change, and more practical issues related to data availability. The authors conclude that environmental information systems must provide people with essential data, but that such information must also be understandable, manageable, comparable, and interoperable so as to promote access to crucial information for resilient communities.

Possibility to Use Professional Bicycle Computers for the Scientific Evaluation of Electric Bikes: Velocity, Cadence and Power Data

The aim of this study was to check whether the data recorded by a bicycle computer paired with typical measurement sensors can be useful for a scientific evaluation of the cyclist–bicycle anthropotechnical system, including electric bicycles. The problem arose when the authors searched for methods to assess the energy efficiency of electric bicycles and intelligent power management systems provided by the assistance system, in accordance with the current needs of the bicycle user. This can be of great importance in the efficient use of electric bicycles and their batteries, in the event that they are rented in public access systems. This article focuses primarily on data on bicycle speed, calculated by the GPS module or obtained from speed sensors, as well as data from the cadence sensor, power measurement, pedaling technique and heart rate. An attempt was made to evaluate the correctness and consistency of the data recorded by the computer through various types of comparatives analyses. The conducted research used data recorded when traveling the same route with various bikes, including electric ones, with and without assistance. This is the second part of the research. The first part focusing on data obtained by a computer from a GPS system and a barometric altimeter was published in an earlier article. In both parts, the authors presented some advantages and disadvantages of using bicycle computers as tools for measuring and acquiring data. In general, it seems that the existing technology used by bicycle computers and the measurement sensors that cooperate with it can be used in the development of a system that optimizes energy consumption.

The Innovative and State of the Art Public Access Management of Malta’s Underwater Cultural Heritage

The obligation to preserve underwater cultural heritage is a core principle of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage. A key element of this obligation is a balance of scientific research, protection, and the promotion of responsible access to underwater cultural heritage sites. Such a balance requires the setting up of a network of communication between the tourism and heritage sectors on the one hand and the maritime and diving communities on the other hand. A variety of approaches have been developed to promote responsible access to underwater cultural heritage sites, and since the vast majority of the public does not dive, this also includes the development of virtual access. In Malta, maritime archaeology can be traced to humble and sporadic beginnings in the 1950s. The following decades brought a growing interest in diving activities and a rising number of diving schools and clubs. Whilst Malta has today established itself as a diving tourism destination, responsible access to underwater cultural heritage sites was not always entrenched in dive operations or institutionally recognized. The protection and management of underwater cultural heritage has recently been firmly established within Heritage Malta, the national agency for museums, conservations, and cultural heritage. This paper is intended to outline the trajectory of Malta’s underwater cultural heritage management and to present the innovative and state of the art public access system that is managed by the Underwater Cultural Heritage Unit within Heritage Malta.

Cloud Security Data Critical Review

Cloud computing is a model for providing convenient network access on demand to some common fund of configurable computing resources. These calculations are flexible, scalable, and inexpensive, but have large-scale sharing of services among multiple users. The broad coverage of the idea of cloud computing has led to significant changes, both in public access systems and in mobile communications, which prompted advanced researchers to provide suitable system protocols and network architecture. In cloud computing, there are two main problems: access control and security. Therefore, the security of both services and users is a significant problem that stands in the way of using and trust in cloud computing.

El acceso a la información gubernamental: análisis empírico de políticas de transparencia en cuatro países centroamericanos

El artículo analiza el funcionamiento de los sistemas de acceso a la información pública en cuatro países centroamericanos (Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua y Panamá) a partir de la metodología utilizada en el proyecto Métrica de la Transparencia 2010, realizado por el Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE). El objetivo específico consiste en identificar retos comunes, problemas recurrentes y mejores prácticas en materia de acceso a la información gubernamental en los cuatro países mencionados. El estudio muestra que, a pesar de que en todos los países se ha avanzado en consolidar una legislación especializada, persisten retos importantes para institucionalizar el funcionamiento de dicho sistema y consolidar su capacidad para efectivamente hacer pública –tanto de manera proactiva como en reacción a solicitudes concretas de los ciudadanos– la información gubernamental. El principal desafío es contar con una política pública que permita estructurar un sistema coherente de acceso a la información.

Teach or Design? How Older Adults’ Use of Ticket Vending Machines Could Be More Effective

The dominance of computer technology in work and leisure poses challenges for older people. Their lack of computer experience and computer literacy impedes their ability to explore and use new interactive systems. This is particularly challenging for the design of public access systems, such as ticket vending machines (TVM). This article describes a conflict relevant for many designers considering age-related differences in technology use: should the user be taught to use the existing design or should the design be changed to accommodate older users? An experiment was conducted to directly compare these alternative approaches with each other and with a simulation of an existing TVM. It compares three TVM designs regarding the usability criteria of effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction, controlling for age, and cognitive and motivational characteristics. 62 older (M = 68 years) and 62 younger (M = 25 years) participants were split into three groups: The control group solved 11 tasks using a simulation of the TVM, the video group watched a brief instructional video before solving the same tasks with the same TVM, and the wizard group used a redesigned wizard interface instead. Results indicate that young and old participants’ performance improved after watching the video, but older participants improved more, reaching the effectiveness of the young control group. In the wizard condition, age differences in effectiveness and satisfaction were eliminated; however, speed differences remained in all conditions. The results suggest that the simple integration of minimal video instruction or a task-oriented wizard design can make public access systems truly universally usable, and that the wizard TVM was a true “walk-up-and-use system.”

Effects of non-aeronautical activities at airports on the public transport access system: A case study of Zurich Airport

Many planning authorities and airports study measures to increase public transport use for airport ground access and egress. At the same time, an increase in real estate development at and around airports is occurring, both due to airports seeking new revenue possibilities and other developers attempting to profit from high value locations. This paper considers non-aeronautical activities at large airports, largely commercial centres and transit hubs, as land uses that have the potential to improve the situation for operating public transport services. In order to assess potential benefits and disadvantages, four research questions are considered: (1) Can the additional travel volume reach levels at which it has a significant impact? (2) To what extent do non-aeronautical activities influence the public transport access system? (3) Is the resulting demand distribution better or worse regarding peaking behaviour? (4) Is there a potential for the resulting overall demand to bring about capacity shortages?A case study is conducted at the airport of Zurich, Switzerland, which finds that non-aeronautical activities in the direct airport vicinity have led to a situation where the operation of public transport services is much more viable due to overall higher passenger numbers and a more even distribution throughout the day. It is concluded that locating non-aeronautical activities at airports can, in addition to providing commercial benefits to developers, lead to a situation where improved public transport services become feasible.

Creating order from chaos: A classificatory approach to retrieval in a local history photographic archive

Abstract With the advent of accessible digital technology in the 1990s, image archive collections that were once the sole preserve of the conservator or researcher with white gloves could now be made available to all. Creating digital surrogates offered promise for increasing public access, however, not without considerable challenges in the making. This article recounts and reflects upon how a local authority aimed to make, potentially, 250,000 glass plate negatives in numerous different local history collections generally accessible by scanning and subject indexing. It considers the challenges of providing metadata that would best meet end-user needs in a touch screen public access system and how and why a hierarchical classification scheme was developed to allow productive browsing of these historic collections of everyday life. The photographic archive case study is then revisited through a twenty-first century lens, discussing latest developments and the potential of open source tools for multidimensional access.

Recreation on private property: landowner attitudes towards allemansrätt

Sweden's right of public access – allemansrätt – allows for access to almost all rural land, so long as care is taken not to damage crops or disturb farm animals, wildlife, or landowners’ privacy. Such access systems are of particular interest as an option for western governments that seek to solve the problem of increasing public demand for access. The article outlines the formal and informal aspects of Sweden's public access system and presents the findings of interviews with landowners in Nynäshamn county, a rural area to the south of Stockholm. Few significant problems with allemansrätt were reported. Landowners displayed positive attitudes towards the continuation of the right of public access and were accepting of the few limitations access plays on rural land management. The lesson for other jurisdictions considering introducing a right to roam is that farming and recreational use can coexist and that whilst an informal behavioural code is important, this needs to be backed up by trespass law, proactive dispute resolution, cooperation between user groups, landowners, and the state, and an ongoing public education campaign.

Neal-Schuman Library Technology Companion: A Basic Guide for Library Staff. 3rd ed

Digital natives are those born after 1980, who grew up in wired societies and who seek and control data elements over the Internet as casually as others once used the telephone [1]. Digital immigrants are those born earlier, who later in life have had to migrate into the computer and online environment and are bewitched, bothered, and bewildered by the new telecommunications technology. The third edition of the Neal-Schuman Library Technology Companion is clearly directed to the latter: “to give colleagues a sound and sensible way to consider and use library technologies…designed to be a one-stop overview.” The guide is divided into five parts and formatted as a tutorial with review questions. What are the technologies and skills needed on a regular basis in most libraries today? Part 1 presents a historical survey of technologies that have impacted libraries and lists resources for further information: How to evaluate needs of a program, to locate technology sources, to implement the new environment, and to train staff give helpful hints for information professionals. Beginning with a review of computer essentials, part 2 covers operating systems and communication networks from local areas to the Internet. How LANS, WANS, intranets, routers, and gateways relate to the local library are carefully explained. The author offers a requiem for the traditional library catalog with its conversion to an online public access system and discusses remote access to electronic databases and the evolution of information storage systems. What can one do on the Internet, the global computer network that has revolutionized information exchange? Searching for information and communicating are major functions now accomplished by clicks on one's own computer. A multiplicity of databases in the sciences, the humanities, and the public domain are now available to individuals and libraries for searching, for sharing files, and for downloading data. Internet search engines, such as Google, and Wikipedia, have in part replaced many search services of the library; the author cautiously analyzes their relationships. Web 2.0, an evolutionary step of the web, allows new forums for interaction, creativity, and collaboration between individuals and among groups. GMail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, AOL, and other webmail options require no local software other than a web browser. Social networking has become an important tool for people to bond online, interact, exchange images, and stay connected. YouTube, Twitter, Second Life, and Skype are now widespread, especially among young people. In the final chapters, the author addresses the potential role of libraries in the new Library 2.0 environment to meet and support the needs of users. He emphasizes that libraries are all about people and people cannot be forgotten in any discussion of technology. The Neal-Schuman Library Technology Companion is a readable and easy-to-understand introduction and guide. Unfortunately, technology moves at such an accelerating rate that overviews require constant updating. It is a valuable start for the digital immigrant.

Smart Handoff Scheme for Supporting Roaming between WLAN and GPRS Networks

Recent advancement in personal communication services (PCS) provides wireless multimedia services for users on the move. For establishing the convenient access environment, the evolution of IP-based integrated scheme becomes very urgent for public wireless access systems. In this paper, we clarify the well-known issues of integrating the general packet radio service (GPRS) network and IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN). These issues include the inconsistence in transmission rate and coverage area, the difficulty in seamless handoff, the complexities of mobile IP and address translations, and so on. Based on classified cases, we propose the circular probe strategy (CPS) to solve the IP translations and measure the precise handoff latency of a mobile node roaming from one network to another. This latency information helps a mobile node and its home agent (HA) to decide the appropriate handoff timing, to maximize the data transmission rate, and to perform seamless handoff in the heterogeneous system. We also proposed the smart access point (AP) mechanism to reduce the overhead of CPS and to provide precise handoff latency information for mobile nodes (MNs) to select the most appropriate AP for association. Experiment results demonstrate that the proposed smart handoff scheme performs better than traditional algorithms in terms of handoff time in the integrated network.

Immediate usability: a case study of public access design for a community photo library

This paper describes a novel instantiation of a digital photo library in a public access system. It demonstrates how designers can utilize characteristics of a target user community (social constraints, trust, and a lack of anonymity) to provide capabilities, such as unrestricted annotation and uploading of photos, which would be impractical in other types of public access systems. It also presents a compact set of design principles and guidelines for ensuring the immediate usability of public access information systems. These principles and guidelines were derived from our experience developing PhotoFinder Kiosk, a community photo library. Attendees of a major HCI conference (CHI 2001 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems) successfully used the tool to browse and annotate collections of photographs spanning 20 years of HCI-related conferences, producing a richly annotated photo history of the field of human–computer interaction. Observations and usage log data were used to evaluate the tool and develop the guidelines. They provide specific guidance for practitioners, as well as a useful framework for additional research in public access interfaces.

A Numerical Daily Air Quality Forecast System for The Pacific Northwest

A real-time photochemical air quality forecast system has been implemented for the Puget Sound region to support public awareness of air quality issues. The Air Indicator Report for Public Access and Community Tracking (AIRPACT) forecast system uses daily numerical weather forecasts from the fifth-generation Pennsylvania State University (PSU)–National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Mesoscale Model (MM5) to drive the California Meteorological Model (CALMET)/California photochemistry grid model (CALGRID) Eulerian photochemical modeling suite. Hourly forecasts of ozone and other pollutant concentrations, including primary particulate emissions from diesel sources, are produced for urban Seattle and environs within a gridded domain consisting of 62 × 67 grid cells (4 km × 4 km) with 13 vertical layers. Detailed gridded emission inventories are adjusted dynamically for time of day, day of the week, month, and gridded ambient temperatures to generate requisite emissions. The forecast system also uses hourly pollutant observation data, reported daily, to perform automated evaluations of forecast accuracy. Forecasts and verification results are provided on a daily basis via the Web (see www.airpact.wsu.edu). This paper describes the forecast system and presents preliminary forecast evaluation results from the Pacific Northwest 2001 (PNW2001) field program and from selected months using the routine monitoring network. AIRPACT is unique nationally as the sole numerical modeling system producing daily, year-round, high-resolution regional air quality forecasts with daily verification.

A review of Web searching studies and a framework for future research

Research on Web searching is at an incipient stage. This aspect provides a unique opportunity to review the current state of research in the field, identify common trends, develop a methodological framework, and define terminology for future Web searching studies. In this article, the results from published studies of Web searching are reviewed to present the current state of research. The analysis of the limited Web searching studies available indicates that research methods and terminology are already diverging. A framework is proposed for future studies that will facilitate comparison of results. The advantages of such a framework are presented, and the implications for the design of Web information retrieval systems studies are discussed. Additionally, the searching characteristics of Web users are compared and contrasted with users of traditional information retrieval and online public access systems to discover if there is a need for more studies that focus predominantly or exclusively on Web searching. The comparison indicates that Web searching differs from searching in other environments.

A review of Web searching studies and a framework for future research

Research on Web searching is at an incipient stage. This aspect provides a unique opportunity to review the current state of research in the field, identify common trends, develop a methodological framework, and define terminology for future Web searching studies. In this article, the results from published studies of Web searching are reviewed to present the current state of research. The analysis of the limited Web searching studies available indicates that research methods and terminology are already diverging. A framework is proposed for future studies that will facilitate comparison of results. The advantages of such a framework are presented, and the implications for the design of Web information retrieval systems studies are discussed. Additionally, the searching characteristics of Web users are compared and contrasted with users of traditional information retrieval and online public access systems to discover if there is a need for more studies that focus predominantly or exclusively on Web searching. The comparison indicates that Web searching differs from searching in other environments.

Designing Public Access Systems

Designing Public Access Systems

Towards a methodology for the design of multimedia public access interfaces

Interface design is particularly important in public access systems, since the quality of the interface will influence the effectiveness with which the public can gather information and conduct transactions. It is also particularly challenging. This paper examines some of the information systems methodologies that have a contribution to make in the design of interfaces for public access systems. On the basis of this examination, some of the features of methodologies that can support the design of public access systems are identified. After an initial exploration of the systems life-cycle, which identifies the key stages in any methodology, the paper proceeds to examine the nature and role of information systems methodologies. A variety of user-centred methodologies are described, including soft systems methodologies, cooperative and participative methodologies, and task-oriented approaches to design. An object-oriented methodology is introduced as a preliminary to the consideration of methodologies for multimedia graphical user interfaces. Comparisons between the stages in some of these methodologies yield an identification of key features for methodologies in the development of public access systems. Such methodologies must accommodate: (i) the creation and structuring of conceptual content and (ii) the interface with the marketplace, in addition to the technical and behavioural considerations that feature in the more established user-centred methodologies.

Towards a Methodology for the Design of Multimedia Public Access Interfaces

Interface design is particularly important in public access systems, since the quality of the interface will influence the effectiveness with which the public can gather information and conduct transactions. It is also particularly challenging. This paper examines some of the information systems methodologies that have a contribution to make in the design of interfaces for public access systems. On the basis of this examination, some of the features of methodologies that can support the design of public access systems are identified. After an initial exploration of the systems life-cycle, which identifies the key stages in any methodology, the paper proceeds to examine the nature and role of information systems methodologies. A variety of user-centred methodologies are described, including soft systems methodologies, cooperative and participative methodologies, and task-oriented approaches to design. An object-oriented methodology is introduced as a preliminary to the consideration of methodologies for multimedia graphical user interfaces. Comparisons between the stages in some of these methodologies yield an identification of key features for methodologies in the development of public access systems. Such methodologies must accommodate: (i) the creation and structuring of conceptual content and (ii) the interface with the marketplace, in addition to the technical and behavioural considerations that feature in the more established user-centred methodologies.

New light on the Reading Room’s future

When the British Library vacates the British Museum’s round Reading Room it will be restored to its pristine decorative style and will accommodate a reference library of publications relevant to the civilisations, cultures and societies represented in the Museum’s collections. It will also house the Walter and Leonore Annenburg Centre which will combine modern technology with traditional sources of information retrieval giving access to COMPASS, the British Museum’s Collections Multimedia Public Access System, linking a highly computerised database with a sophisticated search facility.