Avaliação da informação de websites turísticos das cidades-sede da copa 2014

This study aims to analyze tourist information provided by the official websites of the 2014 FIFA World Cup host cities. The framework developed by Díaz (2005) was applied to analyze different aspects, such as: local tourist information, tourist services distribution, communication and interaction between website and users, and website foreign language versions. This dissertation describes how society and tourism are related by analyzing the consequences of technological evolution in the travel and tourism sector, showing the importance of the use of information and communication technology to provide accurate, upto- date and low-cost information to tourist destinations. Because of the nature of the study, the research subjects are the 12 Brazilian host cities represented by their respective official webpages (cities, states and convention bureaus), and also Brazil s official website, totalizing 36 elements to be analyzed. The methodology has been characterized as descriptive and exploratory with quantitative analysis, and also using desk research and survey literature review. In order to analyze the data collected, parametric and nonparametric statistics tests were used, such as: variance analysis (ANOVA and KRUSKAL-WALLIS) to measure means variance between groups combined with multiple comparison tests (Tukey and Games Howell); nonparametric correlations tests (Kendall s Tau b); and cluster analyses. Finally, Microsoft Excel was used to collect data and SPSS for managing data through quantitative analyses tests. Overall, the websites of the south region showed better results than the other Brazilian regions. Despite this result, the data analysis demonstrated that the available tourist information are incomplete as it was verified that tourist host cities websites are unable to provide all the information needed for the web visitors to organize and plan their journey. This means that visitors have to look for more information in other sources

Postural control and automaticity in dyslexic children: The relationship between visual information and body sway

Difficulty with literacy acquisition is only one of the symptoms of developmental dyslexia. Dyslexic children also show poor motor coordination and postural control. Those problems could be associated with automaticity, i.e., difficulty in performing a task without dispending a fair amount of conscious efforts. If this is the case, dyslexic children would show difficulties in using "unperceived" sensory cues to control body sway. Therefore, the aim of the study was to examine postural control performance and the coupling between visual information and body sway in dyslexic children. Ten dyslexic children and 10 non-dyslexic children stood upright inside a moving room that remained stationary or oscillated back and forward at frequencies of 0.2 or 0.5 Hz. Body sway magnitude and the relationship between the room's movement and body sway were examined. The results indicated that dyslexic children oscillated more than non-dyslexic children in both stationary and oscillating conditions. Visual manipulation induced body sway in all children but the coupling between visual information and body sway was weaker and more variable in dyslexic children. Based upon these results, we can suggest that dyslexic children use visual information to postural control with the same underlying processes as non-dyslexic children; however, dyslexic children show poorer performance and more variability while relating visual information and motor action even in a task that does not require an active cognitive and conscious motor involvement, which may be a further evidence of automaticity problem. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Physical activity and postural control in the elderly: Coupling between visual information and body sway

Background: Aging is characterized by a decline in the postural control performance, which is based on a coherent and stable coupling between sensory information and motor action. Therefore, changes in postural control in elderlies can be related to changes in this coupling. In addition, it has been observed that physical activity seems to improve postural control performance in elderlies. These improvements can be due to changes in the coupling between sensory information and motor action related to postural control. Objective: the purpose of this study was to verify the coupling between visual information and body sway in active and sedentary elderlies. Methods: Sixteen sedentary elderlies ( SE), 16 active elderlies ( AE) and 16 young adults ( YA) were asked to stand upright inside a moving room in two experimental conditions: ( 1) discrete movement and ( 2) continuous movement of the room. Results: In the continuous condition, the results showed that the coupling between the movement of the room and body sway was stronger and more stable for SE and AE compared to YA. In the discrete condition, SE showed larger body displacement compared to AE and YA. Conclusions: SE have more difficulty to discriminate and to integrate sensory information than AE and YA indicating that physical activity may improve sensory integration. Copyright (C) 2005 S. Karger AG, Basel.

TEMPORAL COUPLING BETWEEN EXTERNAL AUDITORY INFORMATION AND THE PHASES OF WALKING

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of an imposed external auditory constraint upon the temporal organization of walking. Ten subjects were videotaped walking normally (N) and with instructions to couple naturally, at mid-swing, or at toe-off to a metronome beat. Based upon an analysis of variance and post hoc Scheffe tests most temporal variables were not significantly different among conditions. The duration of swing phase was significantly different between natural coupling and toe-off. The deviation from the metronome beat was significantly different between the natural coupling and both mid-swing and toe-off. Subjects generally were not successful in achieving coupling during the latter conditions. Thigh and shank phase portraits were used to describe the system's organization to the external constraint.

Entropy, information and doubly stochastic transformations

I analyze two inequalities on entropy and information, one due to von Neumann and a recent one to Schiffer, and show that the relevant quantities in these inequalities are related by special doubly stochastic matrices (DSM). I then use generalization of the first inequality to prove algebraically a generalization of Schiffer's inequality to arbitrary DSM. I also give a second interpretation to the latter inequality, determine its domain of applicability, and illustrate it by using Zeeman splitting. This example shows that symmetric (degenerate) systems have less entropy than the corresponding split systems, if compared at the same average energy. This seemingly counter-intuitive result is explained thermodynamically. © 1991.

Visual information and body sway coupling in infants during sitting acquisition

The purpose of this study was to examine if there is any developmental change in the coupling between visual information and trunk sway in infants as they acquire the sitting position. Twenty-four infants distributed in four groups (6-, 7-, 8-, and 9-month-old) were sat inside a moving room that oscillated back and forward at frequencies of 0.2 and 0.5 Hz. The results revealed that trunk sway matched to the moving room at both frequencies but did not differ among the four age groups. Coherence and gain revealed that the coupling was weaker at 0.2 than at 0.5 Hz. Relative phase showed that at 0.2 Hz, infants were swaying with no lag but at 0.5 Hz they were lagging the room. These results showed that the coupling between visual information and trunk sway in infants varies with the visual stimulus but does not change as infants acquire the sitting position. © 2001 Elsevier B.V.

Information and mechanical models of intelligence: What can we learn from cognitive science?

The impact of new advanced technology on issues that concern meaningful information and its relation to studies of intelligence constitutes the main topic of the present paper. The advantages, disadvantages and implications of the synthetic methodology developed by cognitive scientists, according to which mechanical models of the mind, such as computer simulations or self-organizing robots, may provide good explanatory tools to investigate cognition, are discussed. A difficulty with this methodology is pointed out, namely the use of meaningless information to explain intelligent behavior that incorporates meaningful information. In this context, it is inquired what are the contributions of cognitive science to contemporary studies of intelligent behavior and how technology may play a role in the analysis of the relationships established by organisms in their natural and social environments. © John Benjamins Publishing Company.