A generalized multidimensional index structure for multimedia data to support content-based similarity searches in a collaborative search environment

Since multimedia data, such as images and videos, are way more expressive and informative than ordinary text-based data, people find it more attractive to communicate and express with them. Additionally, with the rising popularity of social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter, multimedia information retrieval can no longer be considered a solitary task. Rather, people constantly collaborate with one another while searching and retrieving information. But the very cause of the popularity of multimedia data, the huge and different types of information a single data object can carry, makes their management a challenging task. Multimedia data is commonly represented as multidimensional feature vectors and carry high-level semantic information. These two characteristics make them very different from traditional alpha-numeric data. Thus, to try to manage them with frameworks and rationales designed for primitive alpha-numeric data, will be inefficient. An index structure is the backbone of any database management system. It has been seen that index structures present in existing relational database management frameworks cannot handle multimedia data effectively. Thus, in this dissertation, a generalized multidimensional index structure is proposed which accommodates the atypical multidimensional representation and the semantic information carried by different multimedia data seamlessly from within one single framework. Additionally, the dissertation investigates the evolving relationships among multimedia data in a collaborative environment and how such information can help to customize the design of the proposed index structure, when it is used to manage multimedia data in a shared environment. Extensive experiments were conducted to present the usability and better performance of the proposed framework over current state-of-art approaches.

Parente sensitive support by paediatric nurses

Introdução The hospitalization of a child is an experience that causes big changes in child and his family life. The parents often suffer from stress and anxiety. This can affect their relationship with the child. Because of the closeness to the parents, nurses have an important role in giving parents support so they can reduce their stress and have more energy to support and take care of their children and in the inclusion of the family in the process of care Objectivos The aim of this study was to define what family-centered care is, to define the needs of hospitalized children's parents and to identify the strategies and methods that the nurses use to give parental support adapted to the parent's needs. It was also a goal to identify and understand the main differences between parental support given by nurses in Belgium and Portugal. Metodologia The study exists out of two parts. First is an integrative review of literature. The search was performed using the databases MEDLINE, CINAHL , PubMed and Science Direct. 18 Articles were selected based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. They had to involve nurses, hospitalized children between 0 and 18 years and their parents. Second part was a focus group. The participants were pediatric nurses from Portugal and Belgium. The goal was to understand different perspectives related to the parental needs of hospitalized children and nursing interventions to answer that needs. Resultados family-centered care can be considered as a partnership between family and nurses. It has some general principles: information sharing, respect differences, negotiation and care in the context of the family. Parent's participation is important to reduce the parental stress and it is essential for meeting the needs of the children. Parents have different needs: knowledge and communication, support, comfort, proximity and assurance. Parents cope with stress in different ways and nurses can support them while they are in the hospital. It is a nurse task to identify the stressors and know methods of emotional support, so she can protect the family structure. Nurses should always see the family as a path to the child, with whom the nurses should worry about taking care and meeting their needs. This is crucial to ensure the family's well-being, adaption to hospitalization and the child's recovery. Conclusões Nurses should collect information about the family which includes family relationships, cultural and religious habits and familiar dynamic. Parents need interpersonal emotional support. It is important for parents to be close to their children but they also need to take care of themselves. When nurses have enough information they can use it to the identification of parental needs and the planning of nursing interventions. It is important that nurses create an environment where parents feel safe and that they have privacy. To create a therapeutic and professional relationship efficient communication is needed. Parents will experience less stress and anxiety.

Parente sensitive support by paediatric nurses

Introdução The hospitalization of a child is an experience that causes big changes in child and his family life. The parents often suffer from stress and anxiety. This can affect their relationship with the child. Because of the closeness to the parents, nurses have an important role in giving parents support so they can reduce their stress and have more energy to support and take care of their children and in the inclusion of the family in the process of care Objectivos The aim of this study was to define what family-centered care is, to define the needs of hospitalized children's parents and to identify the strategies and methods that the nurses use to give parental support adapted to the parent's needs. It was also a goal to identify and understand the main differences between parental support given by nurses in Belgium and Portugal. Metodologia The study exists out of two parts. First is an integrative review of literature. The search was performed using the databases MEDLINE, CINAHL , PubMed and Science Direct. 18 Articles were selected based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. They had to involve nurses, hospitalized children between 0 and 18 years and their parents. Second part was a focus group. The participants were pediatric nurses from Portugal and Belgium. The goal was to understand different perspectives related to the parental needs of hospitalized children and nursing interventions to answer that needs. Resultados family-centered care can be considered as a partnership between family and nurses. It has some general principles: information sharing, respect differences, negotiation and care in the context of the family. Parent's participation is important to reduce the parental stress and it is essential for meeting the needs of the children. Parents have different needs: knowledge and communication, support, comfort, proximity and assurance. Parents cope with stress in different ways and nurses can support them while they are in the hospital. It is a nurse task to identify the stressors and know methods of emotional support, so she can protect the family structure. Nurses should always see the family as a path to the child, with whom the nurses should worry about taking care and meeting their needs. This is crucial to ensure the family's well-being, adaption to hospitalization and the child's recovery. Conclusões Nurses should collect information about the family which includes family relationships, cultural and religious habits and familiar dynamic. Parents need interpersonal emotional support. It is important for parents to be close to their children but they also need to take care of themselves. When nurses have enough information they can use it to the identification of parental needs and the planning of nursing interventions. It is important that nurses create an environment where parents feel safe and that they have privacy. To create a therapeutic and professional relationship efficient communication is needed. Parents will experience less stress and anxiety.

Utilising presence in places to support mobile interaction

Physical places are given contextual meaning by the objects and people that make up the space. Presence in physical places can be utilised to support mobile interaction by making access to media and notifications on a smartphone easier and more visible to other people. Smartphone interfaces can be extended into the physical world in a meaningful way by anchoring digital content to artefacts, and interactions situated around physical artefacts can provide contextual meaning to private manipulations with a mobile device. Additionally, places themselves are designed to support a set of tasks, and the logical structure of places can be used to organise content on the smartphone. Menus that adapt the functionality of a smartphone can support the user by presenting the tools most likely to be needed just-in-time, so that information needs can be satisfied quickly and with little cognitive effort. Furthermore, places are often shared with people whom the user knows, and the smartphone can facilitate social situations by providing access to content that stimulates conversation. However, the smartphone can disrupt a collaborative environment, by alerting the user with unimportant notifications, or sucking the user in to the digital world with attractive content that is only shown on a private screen. Sharing smartphone content on a situated display creates an inclusive and unobtrusive user experience, and can increase focus on a primary task by allowing content to be read at a glance. Mobile interaction situated around artefacts of personal places is investigated as a way to support users to access content from their smartphone while managing their physical presence. A menu that adapts to personal places is evaluated to reduce the time and effort of app navigation, and coordinating smartphone content on a situated display is found to support social engagement and the negotiation of notifications. Improving the sensing of smartphone users in places is a challenge that is out-with the scope of this thesis. Instead, interaction designers and developers should be provided with low-cost positioning tools that utilise presence in places, and enable quantitative and qualitative data to be collected in user evaluations. Two lightweight positioning tools are developed with the low-cost sensors that are currently available: The Microsoft Kinect depth sensor allows movements of a smartphone user to be tracked in a limited area of a place, and Bluetooth beacons enable the larger context of a place to be detected. Positioning experiments with each sensor are performed to highlight the capabilities and limitations of current sensing techniques for designing interactions with a smartphone. Both tools enable prototypes to be built with a rapid prototyping approach, and mobile interactions can be tested with more advanced sensing techniques as they become available. Sensing technologies are becoming pervasive, and it will soon be possible to perform reliable place detection in-the-wild. Novel interactions that utilise presence in places can support smartphone users by making access to useful functionality easy and more visible to the people who matter most in everyday life.

Parent sensitive support by paediatric nurses

Introduction The hospitalization of a child causes big changes in child and his family life. Parents often suffer from stress and anxiety. This can affect their relationship with the child. Because of the closeness to the parents, nurses have an important role in giving parents support so they can have more energy to support and take care of their children and in the inclusion of the family in the process of care Objectives: To define what family-centered care is, the needs of hospitalized children's parents and to identify the strategies and methods that the nurses use to give parental support adapted to the parent's needs and to identify the differences between parental support given by nurses in Belgium and Portugal. Methods and procedures The study exists out of two parts. First is an integrative review of literature. The search was performed using the databases MEDLINE, CINAHL , PubMed and Science Direct. 18 Articles were selected based on inclusion criteria. Second part is a focus group. The participants were pediatric nurses from Portugal and Belgium. Results family-centered care can be considered as a partnership between family and nurses. It has some general principles: information sharing, respect differences, negotiation and care in the context of the family. Parents have different needs: knowledge and communication, support, comfort, proximity and assurance. Parents cope with stress in different ways and nurses can support them while they are in the hospital. It is a nurse task to identify the stressors and know methods of emotional support, so she can protect the family structure. Nurses should always see the family as a path to the child, with whom the nurses should worry about taking care and meeting their needs. Conclusion Nurses should collect information which includes family relationships, cultural and religious habits and familiar dynamic. Parents need interpersonal emotional support. It is important for parents to be close to their children and take care of themselves. Nurses must create an environment where parents feel safe and have privacy. To create a therapeutic and professional relationship efficient communication is needed. Parents will experience less stress and anxiety.

Parent sensitive support by paediatric nurses

Introduction The hospitalization of a child causes big changes in child and his family life. Parents often suffer from stress and anxiety. This can affect their relationship with the child. Because of the closeness to the parents, nurses have an important role in giving parents support so they can have more energy to support and take care of their children and in the inclusion of the family in the process of care Objectives: To define what family-centered care is, the needs of hospitalized children's parents and to identify the strategies and methods that the nurses use to give parental support adapted to the parent's needs and to identify the differences between parental support given by nurses in Belgium and Portugal. Methods and procedures The study exists out of two parts. First is an integrative review of literature. The search was performed using the databases MEDLINE, CINAHL , PubMed and Science Direct. 18 Articles were selected based on inclusion criteria. Second part is a focus group. The participants were pediatric nurses from Portugal and Belgium. Results family-centered care can be considered as a partnership between family and nurses. It has some general principles: information sharing, respect differences, negotiation and care in the context of the family. Parents have different needs: knowledge and communication, support, comfort, proximity and assurance. Parents cope with stress in different ways and nurses can support them while they are in the hospital. It is a nurse task to identify the stressors and know methods of emotional support, so she can protect the family structure. Nurses should always see the family as a path to the child, with whom the nurses should worry about taking care and meeting their needs. Conclusion Nurses should collect information which includes family relationships, cultural and religious habits and familiar dynamic. Parents need interpersonal emotional support. It is important for parents to be close to their children and take care of themselves. Nurses must create an environment where parents feel safe and have privacy. To create a therapeutic and professional relationship efficient communication is needed. Parents will experience less stress and anxiety.

The extracurriculum in an input-poor environment

This paper reports on the experiences of an extracurricular program in English language learning (ELL) that was implemented in an institute of technology in the hinterland of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Following the guidelines set out in an impact study of the reform of curriculum change in Hong Kong (Adamson & Morris, 2000), this study takes account of the context of the particular socio-cultural and political environment in which the research program takes place. Three distinct phases emerged in the career of the extracurricular program - the establishment of the program; successful implementation; and the decline. The study identifies three key factors that shaped these phases: teacher motivation; student motivation and its various influences; and available resources (including collegial and administrative support). The findings suggest that of the key factors impacting on the ELL extracurriculum, student motivation was the most influential.