Strange Environment Research Articles

POETICS OF EXILE: VOICES FROM THE INDIAN DIASPORA

Diasporic literature relates to its homeland through the dialectics of longing and belonging: of the feeling of being uprooted and marginalized. This predicament of all diaspora, who find themselves in a racist, alienating and strange environment, pleads to belong to a more receptive, friendly and equitable land of resettlement. People of Indian Origin, living in over seventy countries, 1 have contributed immensely in making the world as we see it today. They have not only survived, but prospered and constitute “an important force in the world culture”. V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie and Amitav Ghosh, to mention a few, are some major voices of the Indian diaspora.

The Lived Experience of Mentally Disabled Persons Living in Group Homes

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the meaning and nature of the experience of mentally disabled persons living in group homes.Methods: Data were collected through individual in-depth interviews with six mentally disabled persons from April to October in 2017. The data were analyzed using hermeneutic phenomenological methodology based on four fundamental existential concepts: that lived space, lived body, lived time, and lived others.Results: Ten essential themes emerged: lived space-settle down in a strange environment, wish for my independent space in a daily routine; lived body-make a balance between soul and body, lead normal daily life by myself; lived time-rewrite my life; lived others-unapproachable relationship, meet my advocators.Conclusion: The meaning of living in group homes as mentally disabled persons was ‘living as an ordinary person’. This information would be useful in providing interventions to enable such people to return to the community.

Family Experience during Patient Assistance Process in General Intensive Care Unit: A Phenomenology Study

BACKGROUND: Intensive care unit (ICU) treatment can lead to fear, anxiety, depression, panic, and tension in the family. Place of the family as active presence, guardian, facilitator, historian, and coaching of the family cannot be separated from the recovery process. During the assistance of ICU patients, the family is faced with a strange environment, strict rules, emotional stress, and everyday life changes that have caused them to encounter psychological and physiological concerns. AIM: This study aims to describe and interpret of the family’s experience during assistance patient in the ICU. METHODS: A phenomenological methodology is used to explore experience of family. In-depth interviews were conducted on nine participants who were selected using purposive sampling. Data were analyzed by Colaizzi techniques, began with read transcripts, look for phenomenon, formulated data, organized, and verified to the participants. RESULTS: The result is presented in three themes; physically and psychologically tired; good language is a medicine, strengthens each other’s companion. CONCLUSION: The support of the patient in the ICU helps the family face a number of stressful circumstances. Adaptive coping and psychosocial help from health care workers and friends build a supportive family to cope with the difficulties when supporting patients in the ICU.

Unethical practices relating to cattle freedom, care and control among the market handlers in Ibadan metropolis, Nigeria


 
 
 
 Study on some unethical practices affecting cattle among the market handlers was carried out. The three major market centres for cattle in Ibadan city (Akinyele, Bodija and Oranyan) were purposively selected. Eighty (80) structured questionnaires were randomly administered to the respondents in order to elicit information on animal freedom, care and control. Percentage of handlers that believed cattle had no freedom of their own was 51.3. In animal care, 40.0%, 31.3%, 30.0%, 12.5%, 7.5% and 5.0% were of the opinion that cattle could be respectively tired, hungry, sick, heady, injured and being in a strange environment might be the reasons for their refusal to obey the instruction of the handlers. In controlling the cattle for a direction, 85.7%, 10.4% and 3.9% of the handlers used ‘wooden rod’ (Sanda), ‘whip’ and ‘stick’ respectively as the best technique. When an animal did not yield to an instruction to move, 84.0% and 16.0% of the handlers respectively employed dragging and beating as the final option. The study showed that majority of cattle market handlers were inhumane in the freedom, care and control of the animals and therefore, recommends that awareness should be created for a better understanding in animal freedom, care and control.
 
 
 

Improving English as a foreign language–learning performance using mobile devices in unfamiliar environments

In this study, the participants learned English as a foreign language (EFL) in the classroom and then worked on five learning tasks to apply their newly learned knowledge to unfamiliar environments. The participants took photos of people, objects, situations or scenarios and described them in detail using a mobile learning system. Familiarization strategies were developed for the participants to increase their knowledge of strange environments. We aimed to test the effectiveness of the familiarization strategies on learning performance in the mobile-assisted language-learning context. To this end, an experiment was carried out with fifty participants who were assigned either to the experimental or control groups. The participants in the former used the familiarization strategies, whereas the participants in the latter did not. We compared the learning performance of the participants in the two groups based on the scores of pre- and posttests with phrase translation, sentence translation and writing items. We also compared the EFL writing quality of the two groups on five tasks with respect to the amount, vocabulary, grammar, content, origination and creativity dimensions. The results of the pre/posttest comparison showed that the experimental group outperformed the control group on the writing item only. The results showed that the writing quality of the experimental group on the five tasks was significantly better than that of the control group in all of the six dimensions. In addition, all of the participants had positive perceptions of the usefulness of our learning system to assist their EFL learning in unfamiliar environments. The results suggest that familiarization strategies can significantly improve EFL learning performance in unfamiliar environments.

Hubungan Komunikasi Terapeutik Perawat Dengan Tingkat Kecemasan Hospitalisasi Pada Anak Usia Prasekolah (3-6 Tahun)

Pain and hospitalization create a crisis for the lives of children, because in hospitals children have to face a strange environment and meet caregivers they do not know. In this process the child can experience various events or experiences of hospitalization that are traumatic and full of anxiety. Professional nurses can play a role in reducing feelings of fear, anxiety and pain that are felt by children through service using therapeutic communication. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between therapeutic communication of nurses and anxiety levels of preschoolers age. The study design used correlational analysis with a cross-sectional approach. The population is parents with children who experienced hospitalization 67 respondents with a sampling technique using purposive sampling. The results of this study were nearly half the nurses had deficient therapeutic communication (44.8%) and almost half of the patients had severe anxiety levels (44.8%). The results of the Spearman test were obtained (r count) amounting to -0,904 and p value 0,000 so it can be concluded that there is a significant relationship between therapeutic communication nurses with anxiety levels of hospitalization in children. This study is expected so that nurses can improve therapeutic communication skills in providing nursing services through therapeutic communication training programs.

Association of stress and spiritual suffering in the primary caregiver of mechanically ventilated patients

Introduction: The patient with Ventilation Mechanics (VM) becomes completely dependent on the care of the health service, the family becomes the primary caregiver, facing an alteration of their own welfare, disrupting their emotional environment under stress and S ufrimiento E spiritual (I know). Justification Within the approach to the care of the patient with Mechanical Ventilation (MV) assisted and its possible complications derive from being with a sedation, muscle relaxation, not being able to communicate and being away from their relatives they become dependent on health personnel, where nursing and especially family members play a fundamental role, the latter face to a strange environment that alters your spiritual and emotional well-being. Objectives: To determine the association of spiritual suffering and stress in the primary caregiver of the patient with MV in the hospitalization area. Methodology: Quantitative, correlational and cross-sectional study. It was held at a General Hospital in Guanajuato, Mexico. The sample 49 relatives of patients with MV (80% accuracy and 95% reliability) non-probabilistic sampling, by availability. The Instrument was used: Identification of Spiritual Suffering of Primary Caregivers of Patients with Mechanical Ventilation (ISECPPVM), E scala de E strés P ercibido (EEP), salivary cortisol sample was taken. The chi-square test was used for descriptive statistics for its ordinal values, all with a level of significance of P 0.05. Results: Average age was 39.37±14.2 years, predominantly female 79.6%, main diseases pneumonia 20.4%.Level of SE, of the main caregivers of patients with MV, was moderate 73.5%.Stress was identified by means of the EEP questionnaire, the results were 51% high, the average salivary cortisol CTR Salivary Cortisol ELISA Kit was.131504 with a standard deviation of.074769.The chi-square test indicates that there is a significant association (p=0.001) but the sample should be considered to be enlarged.

Low investment non-pharmacological approaches implemented for older people experiencing responsive behaviours of dementia.

IntroductionThe acute care setting is not ideal for older people with dementia; responsive behaviours may be triggered when care is delivered within a strange environment by staff with limited knowledge of life history and personal preferences. Responsive behaviours (e.g., yelling, hitting, restlessness) are used by older people with dementia to communicate their needs and concerns. It is unknown whether non-pharmacological approaches used by nurses support the development of a meaningful interpersonal relationship between nurses and older people with dementia.Aims:The aims of this study were to explore: (a) the types of low investment non-pharmacological approaches (e.g., music, social activities) used by nurses caring for older people experiencing responsive behaviours of dementia in acute medical settings and (b) the factors that influence the decisions of these nurses to implement these approaches.MethodsWe present a qualitative secondary analysis of data from a primary study using Thorne’s interpretive description approach. Interviews were conducted with 11 nurses and four allied health professionals from acute medical settings in Canada. A qualitative secondary data analytic approach was used, specifically analytic expansion, and experiential thematic analysis.Findings:egardless of the educational preparation of nurses, the decision to use specific types of low investment non-pharmacological approaches were influenced by the perfunctory development of the interpersonal relationships in acute care hospitals. The factors that led nurses to use limited approaches (e.g., turning on the TV and providing a newspaper) were lack of dementia care education and attending to other acutely ill clients.Conclusions:This study revealed that nurses in acute medical settings require greater practice growth to deliver relational care which is crucial to supporting older people with dementia. Nurses need education and knowledge translation support to use creative low investment non-pharmacological approaches with the intent on upholding the quality of life older people with dementia.

A Pedestrian Detection and Tracking Method for Robot Equipped with Laser Radar

In order to detect and track pedestrians in complex indoor backgrounds, a pedestrian detection and tracking method for indoor robots equipped with Laser radar is proposed. Firstly, The SLAM (Simultaneous Location and Mapping) technology is applied to obtain 2D grid map for a strange environment; then, Monte Carlo localization is employed to obtain the posterior pose of the robot in the map; then, an improved likelihood field background subtraction algorithm is proposed to extract the interesting foreground in changeable environment; then, the hierarchical clustering algorithm combining with an improved leg model is proposed to detect the objective pedestrian; at last, an improved tracking intensity formula is designed to track and follow the objective pedestrian. Experimental results in some complex environments show that our method can effectively reduce the impact of confusing scenarios which are challenges for other algorithms, such as the motion of the chair, the suddenly passing by person and when the objective pedestrian close to the wall and so on, and can detect, track and follow pedestrians in real time with high accuracy.

科幻小说的本体性知识：类型、要素与边界

We need three types of knowledge to support reading science fiction at least. Ontology knowledge is not only the lever to mobilize the other two kinds of knowledge to participate in reading, but also the key to avoid misreading, including stylistic knowledge such as concept, type, elements and boundary determination. In terms of type, science fiction is divided into two categories , in addition to the theory of “soft and hard”, the eight types determined from the perspective of subject matter are generally recognized by researchers. “Scientific elements”, “strange environment”, “humanistic thinking” and “logical self-consistency” are necessary elements of science fictions. Together with the literary attributes and scientific boundaries of science fictions, they define the creative territory and reading vision of this kind of novels.

Harapan Orang Tua terhadap Peran Perawat pada Anak dengan Hospitalisasi (Studi Fenomenologi)

Hospitalization for children and parents is a very traumatic and stressful experience. Changes in the role, lack of sleep, feelings of pain, immobilization, unable to control yourself, a strange environment and changing daily habits are situations that are often felt by children that can trigger stress. For parents, stress occurs because of anxiety and fear resulting from the seriousness of the disease, procedures performed, treatment, the impact on the future of the child, frustration due to lack of information on procedures and treatment and unfamiliar hospital rules. Parental stress can be further increased when the health team shows an attitude of lack of empathy for them, limited information about caring for their children because of communication that is not well established with the health team, especially nurses and the involvement of parents in caring for their children. This study aims to identify what parents expect from the role of nurses when they care for their children in the hospital in this study. There are 5 themes: 1. Parental satisfaction over the improvement of the patient's condition, 2. Parental anxiety when the child is treated, 3. Adequate support for child care facilities 4. Communication barriers between patient-family nurses and 5. More attention is needed for pediatric patients from a nurse. This study is expected to improve the role of nurses, especially child nurses in carrying out nursing care according to the needs of patients and families.

Early diagnosis and treatment for burn complicated with severe paroxysmal sympathetic hyper-activity

Objective: To investigate the early diagnosis and treatment for burn complicated with severe paroxysmal sympathetic hyperactivity (PSH). Methods: Medical records of patients with burn complicated with severe PSH, admitted to our department from April 2016 to March 2019 and meeting the inclusion criteria were analyzed retrospectively. There were 4 males and 1 female, aged 17 months to 39 years, with an average of (21±16) years. During occurrence of PSH, the vital signs of patients were routinely monitored and oxygen were given. Other treatment included central venous catheterization and infusion of electrolyte solution, infusion of plasma according to patients' condition, use of opioid analgesics and benzodiazepine sedatives, physical cooling and drug cooling, and establishment or maintenance of artificial airway and use of ventilator. Heart rate was controlled below 120 beats per minute in adults and 140 beats per minute in children with comprehensive treatment dominated by analgesia and sedation. Besides, single or multiple vasoactive agents, even in large doses were used to maintain normal blood pressure of patients. The occurrence characteristics, time, and treatment outcome of PSH were analyzed. Results: PSH happened rapidly, with a sharp increase in several minutes to dozens of minutes. Five patients were with symptoms such as high body temperature, shortness of breath, very fast heart rate, normal or elevated systolic blood pressure, hyperhidrosis, and dystonia at the onset. The symptoms occurred simultaneously or successively. According to the Clinical Feature Scale, the above-mentioned 6 indexes achieved the highest score of 3 points except of systolic blood pressure. Four patients showed dilated pupils and impaired consciousness. Among the patients, PSH occurred in the acute exudation stage in 3 patients, in the fluid reabsorption stage in 1 patient, and in the late repair stage in 1 patient. PSH of patients lasted for 3 hours to 12 days. The symptoms of 4 patients were effectively controlled, and 1 patient died of deterioration. No PSH occurred in the cured patients during follow-up of 3 to 14 months. Conclusions: Burn complicated with PSH can occur at any time before wound repair and in patients with different injury conditions. The causes of PSH include sudden burn, persistent pain, fright and fear, strange environment, low blood volume, and other adverse stimuli, and PSH is more likely to occur in children with underdeveloped brain function. Intravenous infusion of analgesics sedatives, physical therapy and medication to lower body temperature, stabilizing blood pressure and respiration are effective measures to treat PSH. PSH should be distinguished from the common complications of burns, such as sepsis, cerebral edema, hyperpyretic convulsion, transfusion response, stress disorder, etc.

Prototyping Non-holonomic Hovercraft for Path Planning and Obstacle Avoidance

— By definition, autonomous control systems are thesystems that sense the physical quantities from their environmentand may execute any dirty, difficult, dull and dangerous taskwithout any intervention. These systems are mostly used in thetransportation of large packages from one place to anotherautonomously by selecting the shortest path, accurate speed andobstacle avoidance. This paper describes the development offuzzy based PID control algorithm to tackle the dynamicconstraints of localization for proposed non-holonomichovercraft. Furthermore, in order to monitor the hovercraft thatwhether it is hovering in a familiar or strange environment;paper suggests the incorporation of digital image processingtechnique which will regularly correlate, the images beingcaptured by the prototype. Moreover, paper methodology alsoprovides the deployment way along with the interfacingtechniques of some configurable sensors, which will share theinformation related to the surroundings of hovercraft usinginternet of things (IoT).

Prototyping Non-holonomic Hovercraft for Path Planning and Obstacle Avoidance

— By definition, autonomous control systems are thesystems that sense the physical quantities from their environmentand may execute any dirty, difficult, dull and dangerous taskwithout any intervention. These systems are mostly used in thetransportation of large packages from one place to anotherautonomously by selecting the shortest path, accurate speed andobstacle avoidance. This paper describes the development offuzzy based PID control algorithm to tackle the dynamicconstraints of localization for proposed non-holonomichovercraft. Furthermore, in order to monitor the hovercraft thatwhether it is hovering in a familiar or strange environment;paper suggests the incorporation of digital image processingtechnique which will regularly correlate, the images beingcaptured by the prototype. Moreover, paper methodology alsoprovides the deployment way along with the interfacingtechniques of some configurable sensors, which will share theinformation related to the surroundings of hovercraft usinginternet of things (IoT).

Prototyping Non-holonomic Hovercraft for Path Planning and Obstacle Avoidance

— By definition, autonomous control systems are thesystems that sense the physical quantities from their environmentand may execute any dirty, difficult, dull and dangerous taskwithout any intervention. These systems are mostly used in thetransportation of large packages from one place to anotherautonomously by selecting the shortest path, accurate speed andobstacle avoidance. This paper describes the development offuzzy based PID control algorithm to tackle the dynamicconstraints of localization for proposed non-holonomichovercraft. Furthermore, in order to monitor the hovercraft thatwhether it is hovering in a familiar or strange environment;paper suggests the incorporation of digital image processingtechnique which will regularly correlate, the images beingcaptured by the prototype. Moreover, paper methodology alsoprovides the deployment way along with the interfacingtechniques of some configurable sensors, which will share theinformation related to the surroundings of hovercraft usinginternet of things (IoT).

Learning to Cooperate via an Attention-Based Communication Neural Network in Decentralized Multi-Robot Exploration

In a decentralized multi-robot exploration problem, the robots have to cooperate effectively to map a strange environment as soon as possible without a centralized controller. In the past few decades, a set of “human-designed” cooperation strategies have been proposed to address this problem, such as the well-known frontier-based approach. However, many real-world settings, especially the ones that are constantly changing, are too complex for humans to design efficient and decentralized strategies. This paper presents a novel approach, the Attention-based Communication neural network (CommAttn), to “learn” the cooperation strategies automatically in the decentralized multi-robot exploration problem. The communication neural network enables the robots to learn the cooperation strategies with explicit communication. Moreover, the attention mechanism we introduced additionally can precisely calculate whether the communication is necessary for each pair of agents by considering the relevance of each received message, which enables the robots to communicate only with the necessary partners. The empirical results on a simulated multi-robot disaster exploration scenario demonstrate that our proposal outperforms the traditional “human-designed” methods, as well as other competing “learning-based” methods in the exploration task.

Same Fuzzy Logic Controller for Two-Wheeled Mobile Robot Navigation in Strange Environments

For any mobile device, the ability to navigate smoothly in its environment is of paramount importance, which justifies researchers’ continuous work on designing new techniques to reach this goal. In this work, we briefly present a description of a hard work on designing a Same Fuzzy Logic Controller (S.F.L.C.) of the two reactive behaviors of the mobile robot, namely, “go to goal obstacle avoidance” and “wall following,” in order to solve its navigation problems. This new technique allows an optimal motion planning in terms of path length and travelling time; it is meant to avoid collisions with convex and concave obstacles and to achieve the shortest path followed by the mobile robot. The efficiency of employing the proposed navigational controller is validated when compared to the results from other intelligent approaches; its qualities make of it an efficient alternative method for solving the path planning problem of the mobile robot.

Robot with Autonomous Navigation System

With the rapid development of robot technology, robots appear more and more in all aspects of life and social production, people also ask more requirements for the robot, one is that robot capable of autonomous navigation, can recognize the road. Take the common household sweeping robot as an example, which could avoid obstacles, clean the ground and automatically find the charging place; Another example is AGV tracking car, which can following the route and reach the destination successfully. This paper introduces a new type of robot navigation scheme: SLAM, which can build the environment map in a totally strange environment, and at the same time, locate its own position, so as to achieve autonomous navigation function.

TLBO-Based Adaptive Neurofuzzy Controller for Mobile Robot Navigation in a Strange Environment

This work investigates the possibility of using a novel evolutionary based technique as a solution for the navigation problem of a mobile robot in a strange environment which is based on Teaching-Learning-Based Optimization. TLBO is employed to train the parameters of ANFIS structure for optimal trajectory and minimum travelling time to reach the goal. The obtained results using the suggested algorithm are validated by comparison with different results from other intelligent algorithms such as particle swarm optimization (PSO), invasive weed optimization (IWO), and biogeography-based optimization (BBO). At the end, the quality of the obtained results extracted from simulations affirms TLBO-based ANFIS as an efficient alternative method for solving the navigation problem of the mobile robot.

The Embedding of Transnational Entrepreneurs in Diaspora Networks: Leveraging the Assets of Foreignness

In this paper we examine how foreign actors capitalize on their ethnic identity to gain skills and capabilities that enable them to operate in a new and strange environment. We explore the mechanisms by which Bulgarian entrepreneurs in London use their ethnic identity to develop competitive advantage and business contacts. We find that the entrepreneurs studied gain access to a diaspora network, which enables them to develop essential business capabilities and integrate knowledge from both home and host country environments. The diaspora community possesses a collective asset (transactive memory) that allows its members to remove competition from the interfirm level to the network level (i.e., diaspora networks vs. networks of native businesspeople). Additionally, the cultural identity and networks to which community members have access provide bridging capabilities that allow diaspora businesspeople to make links to host country business partners and thus embed themselves in the host country environment. Thus, this paper adds to the growing body of work showing how foreignness can serve as an asset in addition to its better-known role as a liability.