An Open Virtual World for Professional Development

The paper presents a study that focuses on the issue of sup-porting educational experts to choose the right combination of educational methodology and technology tools when designing training and learning programs. It is based on research in the field of adaptive intelligent e-learning systems. The object of study is the professional growth of teachers in technology and in particular that part of their qualification which is achieved by organizing targeted training of teachers. The article presents the process of creating and testing a system to support the decision on the design of training for teachers, leading to more effective implementation of technology in education and integration in diverse educational contexts. ACM Computing Classification System (1998): H.4.2, I.2.1, I.2, I.2.4, F.4.1.

A dynamic feature information model for integrated manufacturing planning and optimization

This paper presents a new, dynamic feature representation method for high value parts consisting of complex and intersecting features. The method first extracts features from the CAD model of a complex part. Then the dynamic status of each feature is established between various operations to be carried out during the whole manufacturing process. Each manufacturing and verification operation can be planned and optimized using the real conditions of a feature, thus enhancing accuracy, traceability and process control. The dynamic feature representation is complementary to the design models used as underlining basis in current CAD/CAM and decision support systems. © 2012 CIRP.

Consistency of the decision-maker in pair-wise comparisons

Most authors assume that the natural behaviour of the decision-maker is being inconsistent. This paper investigates the main sources of inconsistency and analyses methods for reducing or eliminating inconsistency. Decision support systems can contain interactive modules for that purpose. In a system with consistency control, there are three stages. First, consistency should be checked: a consistency measure is needed. Secondly, approval or rejection has to be decided: a threshold value of inconsistency measure is needed. Finally, if inconsistency is ‘high’, corrections have to be made: an inconsistency reducing method is needed. This paper reviews the difficulties in all stages. An entirely different approach is to elaborate a decision support system in order to force the decision-maker to give consistent values in each step of answering pair-wise comparison questions. An interactive questioning procedure resulting in consistent (sub) matrices has been demonstrated.

Women of African descent: Persistence in completing doctorates

This study examines the educational persistence of women of African descent (WOAD) in pursuit of a doctorate degree at universities in the southeastern United States. WOAD are women of African ancestry born outside the African continent. These women are heirs to an inner dogged determination and spirit to survive despite all odds (Pulliam, 2003, p. 337).This study used Ellis’s (1997) Three Stages for Graduate Student Development as the conceptual framework to examine the persistent strategies used by these women to persist to the completion of their studies. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, transcribed, and analyzed for the 10 study participants. The study examined their beliefs, roles, and support systems utilized during their studies to help propel them to succeed. Interview data were analyzed using cross-case analysis to discover emerging themes and patterns. A comparative analysis was used to analyze the participants’ experiences and discover themes and patterns to review against the historical data. The findings showed that WOAD experienced feelings of isolation, neglect and racial prejudice as doctoral students. Their ability to formulate supportive relationships among each other and in their communities outside the university was key to their persistence to graduation. There still remains a need to create a more engaging and inclusive environment for nontraditional students, particularly those who are WOAD. The study concludes with six strategies of success used by these WOAD to persist to completion. Those six strategies include 1. Keeping the goal of earning a doctorate and graduating foremost on your mind. 2. Set a class and study schedule that allows you to balance family, work and study. 3. Take care of yourself, physically, mentally and emotionally. 4. Keep a goal chart to track your strides toward completion/graduation. 5. Establish a strong support system among your family, friends, colleagues and community; and 6. Do not let the “isms” (racism, sexism, and ageism) deter you.

Minority Workforce Issues in Athletic Training

Certified Athletic Trainers belonging to ethnic minority groups have many issues in the profession. This paper addresses workforce issues including distribution of minorities, recruitment and retention of minority Certified Athletic Trainers, and support systems for minority Certified Athletic Trainers.

Community-based older adults' perceptions of factors that influence successful aging in place

The purpose of this study was to obtain an understanding of older adults' perceptions of independence and the factors that allow them to remain living independently in the community. A questionnaire was mailed to a random sample of 500 community-based older adults. One hundred seventy eight questionnaires were returned (36%). Respondents were asked questions related to independence, self-health rating, functional difficulties, and social supports. Most respondents indicated Mental Health (97%), Physical Health (97%), Control of choices (97%), and Social Support Systems (93%) contributed to maintaining independence in the community. Age, education, fewer chronic health conditions, and a higher self-health rating were found to be significant predictors of actual independence. Family members were identified as the primary source of assistance with advice on major life decisions and financial matters. Findings indicate age, education, health status and the social support of family and friends all play an important role for older adults to live independently in the community. Occupational therapy could be instrumental in extending the health, highest level of independent functioning, and the number of years older adults remain living in the community.

Progettazione e Sviluppo di un Sistema di Proactive Alerting all'interno di una piattaforma di Big Data Analytics

Il lavoro presentato in questo elaborato tratterà lo sviluppo di un sistema di alerting che consenta di monitorare proattivamente una o più sorgenti dati aziendali, segnalando le eventuali condizioni di irregolarità rilevate; questo verrà incluso all'interno di sistemi già esistenti dedicati all'analisi dei dati e alla pianificazione, ovvero i cosiddetti Decision Support Systems. Un sistema di supporto alle decisioni è in grado di fornire chiare informazioni per tutta la gestione dell'impresa, misurandone le performance e fornendo proiezioni sugli andamenti futuri. Questi sistemi vengono catalogati all'interno del più ampio ambito della Business Intelligence, che sottintende l'insieme di metodologie in grado di trasformare i dati di business in informazioni utili al processo decisionale. L'intero lavoro di tesi è stato svolto durante un periodo di tirocinio svolto presso Iconsulting S.p.A., IT System Integrator bolognese specializzato principalmente nello sviluppo di progetti di Business Intelligence, Enterprise Data Warehouse e Corporate Performance Management. Il software che verrà illustrato in questo elaborato è stato realizzato per essere collocato all'interno di un contesto più ampio, per rispondere ai requisiti di un cliente multinazionale leader nel settore della telefonia mobile e fissa.

Data to Decision in a Dynamic Ocean: Robust Species Distribution Models and Spatial Decision Frameworks

Human use of the oceans is increasingly in conflict with conservation of endangered species. Methods for managing the spatial and temporal placement of industries such as military, fishing, transportation and offshore energy, have historically been post hoc; i.e. the time and place of human activity is often already determined before assessment of environmental impacts. In this dissertation, I build robust species distribution models in two case study areas, US Atlantic (Best et al. 2012) and British Columbia (Best et al. 2015), predicting presence and abundance respectively, from scientific surveys. These models are then applied to novel decision frameworks for preemptively suggesting optimal placement of human activities in space and time to minimize ecological impacts: siting for offshore wind energy development, and routing ships to minimize risk of striking whales. Both decision frameworks relate the tradeoff between conservation risk and industry profit with synchronized variable and map views as online spatial decision support systems.

For siting offshore wind energy development (OWED) in the U.S. Atlantic (chapter 4), bird density maps are combined across species with weights of OWED sensitivity to collision and displacement and 10 km2 sites are compared against OWED profitability based on average annual wind speed at 90m hub heights and distance to transmission grid. A spatial decision support system enables toggling between the map and tradeoff plot views by site. A selected site can be inspected for sensitivity to a cetaceans throughout the year, so as to capture months of the year which minimize episodic impacts of pre-operational activities such as seismic airgun surveying and pile driving.

Routing ships to avoid whale strikes (chapter 5) can be similarly viewed as a tradeoff, but is a different problem spatially. A cumulative cost surface is generated from density surface maps and conservation status of cetaceans, before applying as a resistance surface to calculate least-cost routes between start and end locations, i.e. ports and entrance locations to study areas. Varying a multiplier to the cost surface enables calculation of multiple routes with different costs to conservation of cetaceans versus cost to transportation industry, measured as distance. Similar to the siting chapter, a spatial decisions support system enables toggling between the map and tradeoff plot view of proposed routes. The user can also input arbitrary start and end locations to calculate the tradeoff on the fly.

Essential to the input of these decision frameworks are distributions of the species. The two preceding chapters comprise species distribution models from two case study areas, U.S. Atlantic (chapter 2) and British Columbia (chapter 3), predicting presence and density, respectively. Although density is preferred to estimate potential biological removal, per Marine Mammal Protection Act requirements in the U.S., all the necessary parameters, especially distance and angle of observation, are less readily available across publicly mined datasets.

In the case of predicting cetacean presence in the U.S. Atlantic (chapter 2), I extracted datasets from the online OBIS-SEAMAP geo-database, and integrated scientific surveys conducted by ship (n=36) and aircraft (n=16), weighting a Generalized Additive Model by minutes surveyed within space-time grid cells to harmonize effort between the two survey platforms. For each of 16 cetacean species guilds, I predicted the probability of occurrence from static environmental variables (water depth, distance to shore, distance to continental shelf break) and time-varying conditions (monthly sea-surface temperature). To generate maps of presence vs. absence, Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC) curves were used to define the optimal threshold that minimizes false positive and false negative error rates. I integrated model outputs, including tables (species in guilds, input surveys) and plots (fit of environmental variables, ROC curve), into an online spatial decision support system, allowing for easy navigation of models by taxon, region, season, and data provider.

For predicting cetacean density within the inner waters of British Columbia (chapter 3), I calculated density from systematic, line-transect marine mammal surveys over multiple years and seasons (summer 2004, 2005, 2008, and spring/autumn 2007) conducted by Raincoast Conservation Foundation. Abundance estimates were calculated using two different methods: Conventional Distance Sampling (CDS) and Density Surface Modelling (DSM). CDS generates a single density estimate for each stratum, whereas DSM explicitly models spatial variation and offers potential for greater precision by incorporating environmental predictors. Although DSM yields a more relevant product for the purposes of marine spatial planning, CDS has proven to be useful in cases where there are fewer observations available for seasonal and inter-annual comparison, particularly for the scarcely observed elephant seal. Abundance estimates are provided on a stratum-specific basis. Steller sea lions and harbour seals are further differentiated by ‘hauled out’ and ‘in water’. This analysis updates previous estimates (Williams & Thomas 2007) by including additional years of effort, providing greater spatial precision with the DSM method over CDS, novel reporting for spring and autumn seasons (rather than summer alone), and providing new abundance estimates for Steller sea lion and northern elephant seal. In addition to providing a baseline of marine mammal abundance and distribution, against which future changes can be compared, this information offers the opportunity to assess the risks posed to marine mammals by existing and emerging threats, such as fisheries bycatch, ship strikes, and increased oil spill and ocean noise issues associated with increases of container ship and oil tanker traffic in British Columbia’s continental shelf waters.

Starting with marine animal observations at specific coordinates and times, I combine these data with environmental data, often satellite derived, to produce seascape predictions generalizable in space and time. These habitat-based models enable prediction of encounter rates and, in the case of density surface models, abundance that can then be applied to management scenarios. Specific human activities, OWED and shipping, are then compared within a tradeoff decision support framework, enabling interchangeable map and tradeoff plot views. These products make complex processes transparent for gaming conservation, industry and stakeholders towards optimal marine spatial management, fundamental to the tenets of marine spatial planning, ecosystem-based management and dynamic ocean management.

Development of Independent Living Skills in Project Panther LIFE Students during the Summer Residential Program

Project Panther LIFE: Panther Learning Is For Everyone is an ongoing collaborative partnership between Florida International University (FIU), Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS), and Parent to Parent of Miami, Inc. to develop, implement, support, and expand a non-degree postsecondary transition program for students with intellectual disabilities (ID). In Summer 2014, the program launched its first on-campus three-week Summer Residential Program (SRP) which focused on the development of independent living skills and self-determination skills An overview of the SRP components, program support systems, and benefits of the experience will be given through the perspective of key personnel, partnerships, and students.

Análise da disponibilidade da instrumentação nuclear de um reator de pesquisa

The maintenance of systems and equipment is a central question related to Production Engineering. Although systems are not fully reliable, it is often necessary to minimize the failure occurrence likelihood. The failures occurrences can have disastrous consequences during a plane flight or operation of a nuclear power plant. The elaboration of a maintenance plan has as objective the prevention and recovery from system failures, increasing reliability and reducing the cost of unplanned shutdowns. It is also important to consider the issues related to organizations safety, especially those dealing with dangerous technologies. The objective of this thesis is to propose a method for maintenance analysis of a nuclear research reactor, using a socio-technical approach, and focused on existing conditions in Brazil. The research reactor studied belongs to the federal government and it is located in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The specific objective of this thesis is to develop the availability analysis of one of the principal systems of the research reactor, the nuclear instrumentation system. In this analysis, were taken into account not only the technical aspects of the modules related to nuclear instrumentation system, but also the human and organizational factors that could affect the availability of the nuclear instrumentation system. The results showed the influence of these factors on the availability of the nuclear instrumentation system.

Decisions, decisions everywhere (in the open data era).

Abstract: Decision support systems have been widely used for years in companies to gain insights from internal data, thus making successful decisions. Lately, thanks to the increasing availability of open data, these systems are also integrating open data to enrich decision making process with external data. On the other hand, within an open-data scenario, decision support systems can be also useful to decide which data should be opened, not only by considering technical or legal constraints, but other requirements, such as "reusing potential" of data. In this talk, we focus on both issues: (i) open data for decision making, and (ii) decision making for opening data. We will first briefly comment some research problems regarding using open data for decision making. Then, we will give an outline of a novel decision-making approach (based on how open data is being actually used in open-source projects hosted in Github) for supporting open data publication. Bio of the speaker: Jose-Norberto Mazón holds a PhD from the University of Alicante (Spain). He is head of the "Cátedra Telefónica" on Big Data and coordinator of the Computing degree at the University of Alicante. He is also member of the WaKe research group at the University of Alicante. His research work focuses on open data management, data integration and business intelligence within "big data" scenarios, and their application to the tourism domain (smart tourism destinations). He has published his research in international journals, such as Decision Support Systems, Information Sciences, Data & Knowledge Engineering or ACM Transaction on the Web. Finally, he is involved in the open data project in the University of Alicante, including its open data portal at http://datos.ua.es

Parents’ Preparedness for Their Infants’ Discharge Following First-stage Cardiac Surgery: Development of a Parental Early Warning Tool

Aim The aim of this study was to explore parental preparedness for discharge and their experiences of going home with their infant after the first-stage surgery for a functionally univentricular heart. Background Technological advances worldwide have improved outcomes for infants with a functionally univentricular heart over the last 3 decades; however, concern remains regarding mortality in the period between the first and second stages of surgery. The implementation of home monitoring programmes for this group of infants has improved this initial inter-stage survival; however, little is known about parents’ experiences of going home, their preparedness for discharge, and parents’ recognition of deterioration in their fragile infant. Method This study was conducted in 2011–2013; eight sets of parents were consulted in the research planning stage in September, 2011, and 22 parents with children aged 0–2 years responded to an online survey during November, 2012–March, 2013. Description of categorical data and deductive thematic analysis of the open-ended questions were undertaken. Results Not all parents were taught signs of deterioration or given written information specific to their baby. The following three themes emerged from the qualitative data: mixed emotions about going home, knowledge and preparedness, and support systems. Conclusions Parents are not adequately prepared for discharge and are not well equipped to recognise deterioration in their child. There is a role for greater parental education through development of an early warning tool to address the gap in parents’ understanding of signs of deterioration, enabling appropriate contact and earlier management by clinicians.

Orientation de l’effort des tests unitaires dans les systèmes orientés objet : une approche basée sur les métriques logicielles

Les logiciels actuels sont de grandes tailles, complexes et critiques. Le besoin de qualité exige beaucoup de tests, ce qui consomme de grandes quantités de ressources durant le développement et la maintenance de ces systèmes. Différentes techniques permettent de réduire les coûts liés aux activités de test. Notre travail s’inscrit dans ce cadre, est a pour objectif d’orienter l’effort de test vers les composants logiciels les plus à risque à l’aide de certains attributs du code source. À travers plusieurs démarches empiriques menées sur de grands logiciels open source, développés avec la technologie orientée objet, nous avons identifié et étudié les métriques qui caractérisent l’effort de test unitaire sous certains angles. Nous avons aussi étudié les liens entre cet effort de test et les métriques des classes logicielles en incluant les indicateurs de qualité. Les indicateurs de qualité sont une métrique synthétique, que nous avons introduite dans nos travaux antérieurs, qui capture le flux de contrôle ainsi que différentes caractéristiques du logiciel. Nous avons exploré plusieurs techniques permettant d’orienter l’effort de test vers des composants à risque à partir de ces attributs de code source, en utilisant des algorithmes d’apprentissage automatique. En regroupant les métriques logicielles en familles, nous avons proposé une approche basée sur l’analyse du risque des classes logicielles. Les résultats que nous avons obtenus montrent les liens entre l’effort de test unitaire et les attributs de code source incluant les indicateurs de qualité, et suggèrent la possibilité d’orienter l’effort de test à l’aide des métriques.

Zum Kenntnisstand von Jugendlichen über gesundheitliche Beratungsangebote. Eine Bestandsaufnahme und ein Interventionsansatz

Obwohl eine Vielzahl von Institutionen zur Verfügung steht, an die Kinder und Jugendliche sich bei Schwierigkeiten und Problemen wenden können, bestehen häufig Informationsdefizite und Schwellenängste, die dazu beitragen, daß viele Betroffene keine hinreichende Unterstützung erhalten. In der vorliegenden Studie, an der 1225 Kinder und Jugendliche im Alter von 10 bis 18 Jahren teilnahmen, erfolgt eine Bestandsaufnahme der gegenwärtig bestehenden Defizite und Hemmnisse, indem der Kenntnisstand zu institutionellen Unterstützungsmöglichkeiten und die möglichen Gründe, Unterstützungsangebote anzunehmen bzw. nicht anzunehmen, erfragt wurden. Auf der Basis der Ergebnisse der Bestandsaufnahme wird ein Interventionskonzept entwickelt, das dem Abbau von Informationsdefiziten und Schwellenängsten dient und damit die Akzeptanz bestehender Beratungsangebote erhöhen soll. (DIPF/Orig.)

Trajetórias de vida e a opção pelo sistema de suporte no concelho de Mira

Objetivos: O processo de duplo envelhecimento é universal. Em Portugal, este processo é acompanhado por um aumento e diversificação dos sistemas de suporte. Perante esta realidade, surge a necessidade de investigação acerca dos acontecimentos que influenciam na escolha do sistema de suporte. Assim, os objetivos deste estudo são perceber se as trajetórias de vida influenciam nesta escolha compreender os condicionantes e condicionadores inerentes a esta opção. Metodologias: Este é um estudo exploratório de abordagem quantitativa e qualitativa (análise estatística descritiva, correlacional e de conteúdo). A amostra é composta por 255 pessoas idosas: 130 não usufruem de qualquer resposta social e 125 frequentam uma resposta social. Aplicou-se um inquérito de questões fechadas e abertas que abrangia diversas áreas como acontecimentos de vida, envelhecimento, e equipamentos utilizados, etc. Resultados: Os resultados indicaram que as pessoas idosas preferem o cuidado familiar em detrimento das respostas sociais, em caso de necessidade. Foi possível aferir que variável “com quem vive” relaciona-se significativamente com a opção pelo cuidado em caso de necessidade. As pessoas que vivem com o cônjuge e/ou filhos optam preferencialmente pelo cuidado familiar. Conclusões: Dado os resultados apresentados considera-se importante o desenvolvimento e adaptação do sistema de suporte social nomeadamente das famílias e da rede de suporte formal. Estes devem desenvolver-se e organizar-se para que seja possível tornar exequível as preferências de cuidado da pessoa idosa seja este ou não nos seus próprios meios.