Informàtica sense computadors

Aquesta memòria descriu un procés d’ensenyament dels conceptes importants de l’informàtica a nois de 10-12 anys a partir de activitats divertides i senzilles sense utilitzar ordinadors. Es pretén cobrir una necessitat actual que és fomentar l’ interès per a l'enginyeria, ja el número d’estudiants interessats decreix a nivell mundial. A partir d’un projecte pedagògic paral·lel en anglès es va subtitular en català el vídeo de CSUnplugged, associació australiana que aporta les idees i propòsits per la creació del nostre. Aquesta subtitulació junt amb les activitats que al vídeo es representen han fet un projecte educatiu que creua etapes i coneixements.

Web-pohjaisen videoeditorin toteutus ja Object-Relational Mapping

Tässä insinöörityössä esitellään Stadian verkkoviestinnän VIDEOS-hankkeeseen liittyvän web-pohjaisen videoeditorin kehitys ja käytetyt teknologiat. Fooga-nimiseksi nimetty videoeditorin käyttämät tekniikat ovat Ruby, Ruby on Rails, FFmpeg, Mencoder, ImageMagick ja FLVTool2. Ruby on olio-pohjainen skriptikieli, Ruby on Rails on websovelluskehys ja muut tekniikat ovat komentorivipohjaisia työkaluja, jotka tarjoavat tärkeimmät toiminnallisuudet Foogalle. Tavoitteina oli tämän työn yhteydessä ohjelmoida Foogaan perustoiminnallisuudet, jotka mahdollistavat minimaaliset käyttömahdollisuudet kevääseen 2007 mennessä. Kehitystyö jatkuu vuoteen 2009 asti tarjoamalla samalla mahdollisuuden usealle insinöörityölle tekniikan ja liikenteen koulutusohjelmasta. Tämän lisäksi tässä insinöörityössä perehdytään Object-Relational Mapping-tekniikan perusteisiiin ja verrataan Ruby on Railsin ja Javan ORM-ominaisuuksia. Ruby on Railsin osalta esitellään ActiveRecord-luokka ja Javan osalta Hibernate, jonka johdantona on DAO/DTO-sunnittelumalli.

Social network extraction and analysis based on multimodal dyadic interaction

Social interactions are a very important component in people"s lives. Social network analysis has become a common technique used to model and quantify the properties of social interactions. In this paper, we propose an integrated framework to explore the characteristics of a social network extracted from multimodal dyadic interactions. For our study, we used a set of videos belonging to New York Times" Blogging Heads opinion blog. The Social Network is represented as an oriented graph, whose directed links are determined by the Influence Model. The links" weights are a measure of the"influence" a person has over the other. The states of the Influence Model encode automatically extracted audio/visual features from our videos using state-of-the art algorithms. Our results are reported in terms of accuracy of audio/visual data fusion for speaker segmentation and centrality measures used to characterize the extracted social network.

How patient-centered do female physicians need to be? Analogue patients' satisfaction with male and female physicians' identical behaviors (Published online: 30 Aug 2014)

Previous research suggests that female physicians may not receive appropriate credit in patients' eyes for their patient-centered skills compared to their male counterparts. An experiment was conducted to determine whether a performance of higher (versus lower) verbal patient-centeredness would result in a greater difference in analogue patient satisfaction for male than female physicians. Two male and two female actors portrayed physicians speaking to a patient using high or low patient-centered scripts while not varying their nonverbal cues. One hundred ninety-two students served as analogue patients by assuming the patient role while watching one of the videos and rating their satisfaction and other evaluative responses to the physician. Greater verbal patient-centeredness had a stronger positive effect on satisfaction and evaluations for male than for female physicians. This pattern is consistent with the hypothesis that the different associations between patient-centeredness and patients' satisfaction for male versus female physicians occur because of the overlap between stereotypical female behavior and behaviors that comprise patient-centered medical care. If this is the case, high verbal patient-centered behavior by female physicians is not recognized as a marker of clinical competence, as it is for male physicians, but is rather seen as expected female behavior.

Kevyt videotuotanto kuvaamisesta julkaisuun

Opinnäytetyön tavoitteena on määritellä kevyt videotuotanto, määritellä verkkoleikkaaminen ja analysoida kevyen videotuotannon tuotteita eli verkkovideoiden roolia mediakentässä julkaisemisen kannalta. Opinnäytetyö sai alkunsa Stadian Videos-hankkeen videotuotantojen yhteydessä. Aihealue tarkentui Helsingissä järjestettävän ESC2007- eli Euroviisut 2007 -monijulkaisutuotannon yhteydessä. ESC2007-tapahtuman ympärillä tuotettiin ammattikorkeakoulu Arcadan sekä Dina-kaapelikanavan yhteistyönä useilla erilaisilla tuotantomenetelmillä materiaalia Euroviisujen tapahtumista, ilmiöistä ja ihmisistä. Yksi näistä tuotantomenetelmistä oli multimediapuhelin-tuotanto. Toimittajat kuvasivat niin sanotuilla kamerakännyköillä videomateriaalia, haastatteluja ja niin edelleen. Näitä kahta tuotantoa eli Videos-hankkeen tuotantoja ja ESC2007-tuotantoa käytetään tässä opinnäytetyössä pohjana kevyen videotuotannon määrittelemiselle. Lisäksi opinnäytetyössä selvitetään verkkovideoeditointia, joka on myös osa Videos-hanketta. Videos- hankkeen tarkoitus on rakentaa verkkoleikkauseditori Fooga, joka on täysin vapaasti asennettavissa kenen tahansa internet-sivuille. Opinnäytetyössä esitellään myös muita verkkovideoeditoreja. Lopuksi määritellään kevyt videotuotanto perusteluineen. Lisäksi kokonaisuudessa kerrotaan verkkovideoiden julkaisemisesta sekä mediakonvergenssin ja divergenssin merkityksestä julkaisemisessa. Opinnäytetyön tuloksena voidaan todeta, että kevyt videotuotanto on nopean reagoimisen videotuotanto, jossa idea näyttelee pääroolia.

Evaluación de la Conservación de la Colección Sabater Pi en la Biblioteca de la Universitat de Barcelona

El objetivo de la evaluación de la Colección Sabater Pi, deriva del hecho de que este fondo se encuentre depositado en estos momento en el edificio de la Biblioteca de Bellas Artes, ocupando dos salas y un pequeño almacén, compartiendo un espacio que consideramos no es el más adecuado para una conservación ideal: entorno urbano, enclave, situación, espacio, almacenaje, clasificación, etc. La colección está dividida en varias tipologías: libros, dibujos, manuscritos, revistas, fotografías, diapositivas, videos, objetos etnológico, objetos de zoología, todas ellas reunidas en un espacio que consideramos no cumplen las normas establecidas para la exposición o exhibición y el almacenaje ideal de los fondos. Abría que añadir el hecho de que este mismo lugar se llevan a cabo tareas de clasificación, administración y consulta de los fondos por investigadores. También acoge de vez en cuando vistas guiadas de grupos de escolares, atraídos por el hecho de que el fundador de esta colección, el Sr. Jordi Sabater Pi, fuese el descubridor del gorila albino, “Copito de Nieve” que durante muchos años fue considerado como un icono de la ciudad de Barcelona. El interés radicaría el estar formado por un conjunto diverso, guardado en un espacio común y en unas condiciones poco apropiadas. Debido a que recientemente se han presentado algunos problemas en los fondos en cuanto a su conservación, consideramos la ocasión muy propicia para realizar esta Evaluación del Estado de Conservación aplicado a un caso real y en este momento de especial interés.

Disseny i elaboració d'un gimnàs on-line

L’evolució que ha experimentat la societat, les grans ciutats, la industrialització i molts altres factors han modificat l’estil de vida de les persones accentuant-ne, irremediablement, el sedentarisme i l’abstinència de realitzar exercici físic. La pràctica esportiva i/o d’exercici físic realitzada sota les condicions recomanades pels professionals, és beneficiosa per millorar el nivell de salut o mantenir-lo en tot el possible, ja que provoca modificacions beneficioses sobre el metabolisme, el sistema cardiovascular i l’aparell locomotor. Lamentablement, l’hàbit de realitzar exercici físic no és comú en totes les persones, ja sigui per l’estil de vida que genera incompatibilitats d’horaris amb la feina, fills i familiars o bé per mandra o desgana d’haver d’aprofitar aquelles estones de temps lliure per dedicar-los al culte del cos i de la salut. Els efectes negatius que suposa una modalitat de vida sedentària per a la salut són notablement elevats, amb la qual cosa, cal buscar sistemes per augmentar l’ interès de la població per la pràctica de l’esport i l’activitat física. La creació d’aquest projecte neix de la idea d’unir el fet d’enginyar un mètode per incrementar l’interès de les persones per l’exercici físic amb els avenços tecnològics que s’han realitzat aquesta última dècada relacionats amb el desenvolupament web i multimèdia. A grans trets, la idea general d’aquest projecte es basa en el cas d’un gimnàs real i en actiu, amb necessitat de crear un portal web que serveixi alhora de pàgina web informativa i d’eina de gestió acadèmica del centre proporcionant certes funcionalitats als clients tot presentant-los una nova modalitat de realitzar exercici físic dirigit: realitzar-lo des de casa. Per desenvolupar tot el sistema informàtic que ho durà a terme, després de realitzar una recerca, anàlisi i elecció de les eines mitjançant les quals poder-ho realitzar, s’ha optat per crear l’entorn web mitjançant els llenguatges HTML i PHP en combinació amb els fulls d’estil CSS. Pel que fa a l’entorn de desenvolupament, s’ha utilitzat Notepad++ i com a entorn de proves, WAMP Server. Per últim, pel que fa a la transmissió del contingut multimèdia (vídeos de les sessions d’activitats) s’ha utilitzat Flash Media Interactive Server en combinació de Flash Media Live Encoder per codificar-ne el contingut. L’usuari final, des de qualsevol punt del planeta, podrà realitzar (sempre i quan disposi del temps i el material necessari i una connexió a Internet) en temps real i en directe les classes dirigides que es realitzen al centre. Tanmateix, també s’ha desenvolupat una botiga virtual on qualsevol persona podrà comprar-hi, entre d’altres coses relacionades amb la pràctica de l’exercici físic, tot el material necessari per realitzar qualsevol de les activitats que s’imparteixen al gimnàs i ho rebrà còmodament a casa. Aprofitar unes circumstàncies econòmiques adverses per generar una nova manera de captar clients proporcionant-los una alternativa econòmica, diferent, nova i original d’anar al gimnàs. Temps de crisis, temps d’oportunitats. Aquesta és la moralitat que pretén donar aquest projecte.

Argument omissions in preschool Catalan and Spanish speaking children with SLI

El presente artículo describe tres estudios sobre la producción del verbo y la estructura argumental en niños con Trastorno Específico del Lenguaje (TEL) usando diferentes metodologías. El primero es un estudio observacional que usa una muestra de habla espontánea. El segundo usa una tarea experimental de denominación de oraciones como resultado de la observación de videos de acciones. El tercero comprende la tarea de denominación de oraciones con imágenes estáticas en eventos con diferente complejidad argumental. Aunque los datos concretos varían en función de la metodología usada, hay una clara evidencia de que los niños de habla catalana y española con TEL presentan especiales dificultades en la producción de verbos con una alta complejidad en relación a la estructura argumental y cometen errores en la especificación de los argumentos obligatorios. Se concluye quetanto limitaciones en el procesamiento como déficits en la representación semántica de los verbos pueden estar implicados en estas dificultades

Explorando as percepções de professores em serviço sobre as visualizações no ensino de química

Taking into account the requirements for the teaching of chemistry, several visualization resources (software, videos, animations, molecular models, among others) are available. These visual aids are used in order to enhance the understanding of chemical phenomena in the classroom. However, many teachers make scant use of these resources, limiting macroscopic understanding of chemical science. Thus, this article discusses chemistry teachers' views on several aspects such as using visual aids in teaching chemistry, a resource most widely used in classes on atomic models, isomerism and spatial geometry.

ESTRATEGIA DE DOBLE CICLO DE SUPERVISIÓN CLÍNICA PARA LA MEJORA DE LA CALIDAD DOCENTE EN LA UNIVERSIDAD. PUNTO DE VISTA DEL PROFESORADO NOVEL

This work describes a mentorship experience. Mentorship of novice teachers by experienced teachers is an important aspect in training teachers for universities. The strategy followed in this work consisted of a double improvement cycle (or clinical supervision cycle), based on the use of recordings of classes. Each of these cycles included planning, recording, viewing and analysis. Conclusions were reached in a final meeting after video analysis. In order to systematize the viewing, analysis and assessment of the videos, an observation test was employed. Class planning, contents, methodology, and verbal and nonverbal communication skills were evaluated using the test.

Eettinen kasvu ja dialogisuus draaman näyttämöllä : valokiilassa päiväkodin draamaprosessi

This research is a phenomenological-hermeneutic case-study based on the methods of action research in which narrative methods are used to examine a process drama carried out in a day-care centre, focusing on its dialogicality and possibilities of offering children and adults ethical problems to examine and solve. A process drama built around a story was carried out in a Finnish day-care centre in 1999 with the aim of bringing ethical education to the level of conscious consideration and action. The research consists of two case-studies. The first focuses on Risto, one of the children who participated in the process, his actions in group situations, his commitment to the rules set by the leaders, his attitude towards the group and its members as well as the common agreements concerning the group, and his solutions to fictive dilemmas in relation to Lawrence Kohlberg’s and Carol Gilligan’s concepts of justice and care. On this basis conclusions are made on how drama can be applied to dealing with ethical dilemmas with children aged four to seven. The second case-study searches for ethical themes and signs of dialogicality in the story that was created together by the children and leaders, and in the action that took place in the drama sessions. The subjects of this study consist of two groups participating in the process drama, both consisting of seven children aged four to seven. Narratives were written on each child based on his/her participation in four drama sessions selected to be used in this study. The narratives include the writer’s interpretations of the dialogicality of the drama and the ethical themes observed and recognised in the videos and in the transcriptions of the video recordings. The description and interpretation of the dialogicality and the ethical themes observed in the drama sessions is based on the researcher’s dialogue with the writings of Georg Henrik von Wright, Martin Buber and Mihail Bahtin, as well as Nicholas C. Burbules’ definitions of the basic conditions for dialogical teaching. As a result of the study, drama activity proved to be a means by which dialogically abstract ethical questions and conflicts could be dealt with even with young children and which revealed the zone of proximal development of both children and adults. Drama became a stage for ethical growth and dialogicality, and the common play of children and adults could be seen as an indicator of deep dialogicality. On the basis of this study, it can be said that drama is a very suitable way of establishing a shape and form of ethical education in which it is possible to make planned, target-oriented progress and which can be consciously observed by following the development of both the child and the educator.

Image analysis for assessing broiler breeder behavior response to thermal environment

The research proposes a methodology for assessing broiler breeder response to changes in rearing thermal environment. The continuous video recording of a flock analyzed may offer compelling evidences of thermal comfort, as well as other indications of welfare. An algorithm for classifying specific broiler breeder behavior was developed. Videos were recorded over three boxes where 30 breeders were reared. The boxes were mounted inside an environmental chamber were ambient temperature varied from cold to hot. Digital images were processed based on the number of pixels, according to their light intensity variation and binary contrast allowing a sequence of behaviors related to welfare. The system used the default of x, y coordinates, where x represents the horizontal distance from the top left of the work area to the point P, and y is the vertical distance. The video images were observed, and a grid was developed for identifying the area the birds stayed and the time they spent at that place. The sequence was analyzed frame by frame confronting the data with specific adopted thermal neutral rearing standards. The grid mask overlapped the real bird image. The resulting image allows the visualization of clusters, as birds in flock behave in certain patterns. An algorithm indicating the breeder response to thermal environment was developed.

DEVELOPING A CROWDSOURCED VIDEOGRAPHIC RESEARCH METHOD FOR CONSUMER CULTURE RESEARCH

The purpose of this study is to develop a crowdsourced videographic research method for consumer culture research. Videography provides opportunities for expressing contextual and culturally embedded relations. Thus, developing new ways to conduct videographic research is meaningful. This study develops the crowdsourced videographic method based on a literature review and evaluation of a focal study. The literature review follows a qualitative systematic review process. Through the literature review, based on different methodological, crowdsourcing and consumer research related literature, this study defines the method, its application process and evaluation criteria. Furthermore, the evaluation of the focal study, where the method was applied, completes the study. This study applies professional review with self-evaluation as a form of evaluation, drawing from secondary data including research task description, screenshots of the mobile application used in the focal study, videos collected from the participants, and self-evaluation by the author. The focal study is analyzed according to its suitability to consumer culture research, research process and quality. Definitions and descriptions of the research method, its process and quality criteria form the theoretical contribution of this study. Evaluating the focal study using these definitions underlines some best practices of this type of research, generating the practical contribution of this study. Finally, this study provides ideas for future research. First, defining the boundaries of the use of crowdsourcing in various parts of conducting research. Second, improving the method by applying it to new research contexts. Third, testing how changes in one dimension of the crowdsourcing models interact with other dimension. Fourth, comparing the quality criteria applied in this study to various other quality criteria to improve the method’s usefulness. Overall, this study represents a starting point for further development of the crowdsourced videographic research method.

The potential of social networking sites in inpatriate adjustment

People make up one of the most important resources for a corporation and therefore it has to continuously seek an ever more diverse and international workforce. Inpatriation is another way of utilizing foreign expertise in a corporation. An inpatriate refers to a person that is on an international assignment at the headquarters of a corporation, where they have been sent either from a subsidiary abroad or from a third country outside the corporation. Strengthening the social network of the inpatriate and their family contributes to the adjustment process and furthermore the success of the work assignment. As social networking sites are currently the fastest developing personal networking tools in the world, it is interesting to see how they can help in inpatriate adjustment. The objective of this thesis is to explore the potential of social networking sites (SNS) in inpatriate adjustment. The main objective can be divided into three sub objectives: 1. What is SNS used for during the inpatriate assignment? 2. What are the inpatriates’ motivations to use SNS? 3. Could the three facets of adjustment (work, interaction and general) be gained through SNS? This qualitative study utilizes the theme interview data collection method and the thematic analysis approach for analysing the interview data. From the interviews with five Indian inpatriates in Finland the most mentioned uses of SNS were related to participating (sharing opinions, recommendations and discussing things and connecting to friends, family and colleagues) and consuming (collecting information for work and free time), the least mentioned use of SNS was producing (posting videos, photos and updates). An interesting finding was that the five interviewees did not use SNS for purely entertainment motives at all during their assignment. This thesis found that all three facets of adjustment could potentially be gained through SNS.

Video transcoding in a distributed cloud computing environment

Video transcoding refers to the process of converting a digital video from one format into another format. It is a compute-intensive operation. Therefore, transcoding of a large number of simultaneous video streams requires a large amount of computing resources. Moreover, to handle di erent load conditions in a cost-e cient manner, the video transcoding service should be dynamically scalable. Infrastructure as a Service Clouds currently offer computing resources, such as virtual machines, under the pay-per-use business model. Thus the IaaS Clouds can be leveraged to provide a coste cient, dynamically scalable video transcoding service. To use computing resources e ciently in a cloud computing environment, cost-e cient virtual machine provisioning is required to avoid overutilization and under-utilization of virtual machines. This thesis presents proactive virtual machine resource allocation and de-allocation algorithms for video transcoding in cloud computing. Since users' requests for videos may change at di erent times, a check is required to see if the current computing resources are adequate for the video requests. Therefore, the work on admission control is also provided. In addition to admission control, temporal resolution reduction is used to avoid jitters in a video. Furthermore, in a cloud computing environment such as Amazon EC2, the computing resources are more expensive as compared with the storage resources. Therefore, to avoid repetition of transcoding operations, a transcoded video needs to be stored for a certain time. To store all videos for the same amount of time is also not cost-e cient because popular transcoded videos have high access rate while unpopular transcoded videos are rarely accessed. This thesis provides a cost-e cient computation and storage trade-o strategy, which stores videos in the video repository as long as it is cost-e cient to store them. This thesis also proposes video segmentation strategies for bit rate reduction and spatial resolution reduction video transcoding. The evaluation of proposed strategies is performed using a message passing interface based video transcoder, which uses a coarse-grain parallel processing approach where video is segmented at group of pictures level.