Using auditory hallucinations as a therapeutic tool.

This paper integrates psychodynamic and cognitive theories understanding of schizophrenia and the function of auditory hallucinations to propose five principles for the successful treatment of auditory hallucinations within schizophrenia; connection, education, collaboration, empowerment, and independence. Pharmacological and biological research is acknowledged and integrated into psychological treatment using case information based on an autobiographical novel by a person diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Rastreamento do olhar na avaliação de presença em atividades mediadas por vídeo.

A percepção de presença (PP), evolução do conceito de telepresença, pode ser definida como ilusão perceptiva de não mediação e/ou a percepção ilusória da realidade. O método mais utilizado para a avaliação da PP faz uso de questionários aplicados aos sujeitos, após sua participação numa experiência. Além de não fornecer informações em tempo real esse método sofre muitas interferências advindas tanto dos sujeitos submetidos ao experimento como dos avaliadores dos questionários. Os métodos que poderiam ser mais efetivos para a avaliação da PP, em tempo real, fazem uso de sinais fisiológicos que variam independentemente da vontade dos sujeitos, como batimento cardíaco, eletrocardiograma, eletroencefalograma, resistividade e umidade da pele. Os sinais fisiológicos, no entanto, só variam de forma significativa em situações de estresse, inviabilizando sua utilização em atividades normais, sem estresse. Outra forma de avaliar a PP é utilizar sistemas de rastreamento do olhar. Estudados e desenvolvidos desde o século 19, os sistemas de rastreamento do olhar fornecem um mapeamento do movimento dos olhos. Além de indicar para onde os sujeitos estão olhando, podem também monitorar a dilatação da pupila e as piscadas. Atualmente existem sistemas de rastreamento do olhar comerciais de baixo custo, que apesar de terem menos precisão e frequência que os equipamentos de alto custo são mais práticos e possuem software de plataforma aberta. No futuro serão tão comuns e simples de usar como são hoje as câmeras em dispositivos móveis e computadores, o que viabilizará a aplicação das técnicas e métodos aqui propostos em larga escala, principalmente para monitorar a atenção e envolvimento de atividades mediadas por vídeo. É apresentada uma ferramenta que faz uso do rastreamento do olhar para avaliar a percepção de presença em atividades mediadas por vídeo (com estímulos sonoros). Dois experimentos foram realizados para validar as hipóteses da pesquisa e a ferramenta. Um terceiro experimento foi executado para verificar a capacidade da ferramenta em avaliar a percepção de presença em atividades não estressantes mediadas por vídeo.

JRNL: Journal Retention and Needs Listing — A Software Tool for Managing Print Journal Archives

The Journal Retention and Needs Listing (JRNL) program: 1) allows libraries to expose lists of print journals for which they have made retention commitments; 2) express needs (or gaps) in their holdings; and 3) communicate offers to fill the gaps in other participating libraries’ holdings. Multiple library consortia and their member libraries use JRNL to facilitate communication between library staff to identify holding commitments, fill gaps, and guide deselection decisions. JRNL is commonly developed and governed by the participating consortia. Currently, those consortia are the Florida Academic Repository (FLARE), the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL)/Washington Research Library Consortium (WRLC), and the Western Regional Storage Trust (WEST).

History of health, a valuable tool in public health

The aim of this article is to highlight the importance of the history of public health for public health research and practice itself. After summarily reviewing the current great vitality of the history of collective health oriented initiatives, we explain three particular features of the historical vantage point in public health, namely the importance of the context, the relevance of a diachronic attitude and the critical perspective. In order to illustrate those three topics, we bring up examples taken from three centuries of fight against malaria, the so called “re-emerging diseases” and the 1918 influenza epidemic. The historical approach enriches our critical perception of the social effects of initiatives undertaken in the name of public health, shows the shortcomings of public health interventions based on single factors and asks for a wider time scope in the assessment of current problems. The use of a historical perspective to examine the plurality of determinants in any particular health condition will help to solve the longlasting debate on the primacy of individual versus population factors, which has been particularly intense in recent times.

Reverse engineering as a teaching tool: the corneal topographer

Póster presentado en EDULEARN12, International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies, Barcelona, 2nd-4th July 2012.

Reverse engineering as a teaching tool: the corneal topographer

Reverse engineering is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object or system through analysis of its structure, function, and operation. From a device used in clinical practice, as the corneal topographer, reverse engineering will be used to infer physical principles and laws. In our case, reverse engineering involves taking this mechanical device apart and analyzing its working detail. The initial knowledge of the application and usefulness of the device provides a motivation that, together with the combination of theory and practice, will help the students to understand and learn concepts studied in different subjects in the Optics and Optometry degree. These subjects belong to both the core and compulsory subjects of the syllabus of first and second year of the degree. Furthermore, the experimental practice is used as transverse axis that relates theoretical concepts, technology transfer and research.

COMPENDIUM: a text summarisation tool for generating summaries of multiple purposes, domains, and genres

In this paper, we present a Text Summarisation tool, compendium, capable of generating the most common types of summaries. Regarding the input, single- and multi-document summaries can be produced; as the output, the summaries can be extractive or abstractive-oriented; and finally, concerning their purpose, the summaries can be generic, query-focused, or sentiment-based. The proposed architecture for compendium is divided in various stages, making a distinction between core and additional stages. The former constitute the backbone of the tool and are common for the generation of any type of summary, whereas the latter are used for enhancing the capabilities of the tool. The main contributions of compendium with respect to the state-of-the-art summarisation systems are that (i) it specifically deals with the problem of redundancy, by means of textual entailment; (ii) it combines statistical and cognitive-based techniques for determining relevant content; and (iii) it proposes an abstractive-oriented approach for facing the challenge of abstractive summarisation. The evaluation performed in different domains and textual genres, comprising traditional texts, as well as texts extracted from the Web 2.0, shows that compendium is very competitive and appropriate to be used as a tool for generating summaries.

Dynamic visual servo control of a 4-axis joint tool to track image trajectories during machining complex shapes

A large part of the new generation of computer numerical control systems has adopted an architecture based on robotic systems. This architecture improves the implementation of many manufacturing processes in terms of flexibility, efficiency, accuracy and velocity. This paper presents a 4-axis robot tool based on a joint structure whose primary use is to perform complex machining shapes in some non-contact processes. A new dynamic visual controller is proposed in order to control the 4-axis joint structure, where image information is used in the control loop to guide the robot tool in the machining task. In addition, this controller eliminates the chaotic joint behavior which appears during tracking of the quasi-repetitive trajectories required in machining processes. Moreover, this robot tool can be coupled to a manipulator robot in order to form a multi-robot platform for complex manufacturing tasks. Therefore, the robot tool could perform a machining task using a piece grasped from the workspace by a manipulator robot. This manipulator robot could be guided by using visual information given by the robot tool, thereby obtaining an intelligent multi-robot platform controlled by only one camera.

Project SCORE! Coaches’ Perceptions of an Online Tool to Promote Positive Youth Development in Sport

Research points to the potential of youth sport as an avenue to support the growth of particular assets and outcomes. A recurring theme in this line of research is the need to train coaches to deliberately deliver themes relating to positive youth development (PYD) consistently in youth sport programs. The purpose of the study was to design and deliver a technology-based PYD program. Project SCORE! (www.projectscore.ca) is a series of 10 lessons to help coaches integrate PYD into sport. Four youth sport coaches completed the program in this first phase of this research and were interviewed. The goal of this study was to gain some insights from coaches as they completed the program. Positive comments about the program (i.e. ease of use, success of particular lessons, coach’s personal growth) and challenges regarding teaching positive skills to youth are discussed. These results helped to shape the program and make necessary changes so that it may be used for a larger research study. Other implications and future research directions are discussed.

EU Sanctions: A Relevant Foreign Policy Tool? EU Diplomacy Paper No. 3, May 2014

This paper examines an instrument which establishes an explicit link between economic power and foreign policy of the European Union (EU): restrictive measures or sanctions. As the EU is increasingly confronted with situations requiring a firm response, sanctions – arguably the EU’s ‘hardest’ tool – have become somewhat of a standard reaction. To what extent are sanctions a relevant tool for EU external action? By looking at several case studies from a set of 47 autonomous EU sanction cases, this paper acknowledges the many internal and external difficulties the EU faces when using the sanctions tool. However, it also shows that despite those challenges, the ‘hard’ and coercive nature of the sanction instrument nevertheless make it a relevant foreign policy tool which allows the EU to react to external crises.

e-Consultation as a tool for participation in teachers’ unions: the greater the focus, the greater the number of visits

In the 2000’s, the Internet became the preferred mean for the citizens to communicate. The YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, i.e., the social networks in general appeared together with the Web 2.0, which allows an extraordinary interaction between citizens and the democratic institutions. The trade unions constantly fight governments’ decisions, especially in periods of crisis like the one that the world, Europe and, in particular, Portugal are facing. In this regard, the use of e-participation platforms is expected to strengthen the relationship between trade unions and the education community. This paper reports the research about the planning and driving of a series of experiments of online public consultation, launched by teachers’ trade unions. These experiments are compared with those of other countries, such as Australia, United Kingdom and United States of America. A quantitative analysis of the results regarding hits, subscriptions, and response rates is presented, and it is compared with the 90-9-1 rule, the ASCU model and data from government agencies. The experiments performed used the Liberopinion, an online platform that supports bidirectional asynchronous communication. A better understanding of the benefits of these collaborative environments is expected by promoting quality of interaction between actors.

2C-Cas9: a versatile tool for clonal analysis of gene function

CRISPR/Cas9-mediated targeted mutagenesis allows efficient generation of loss-of-function alleles in zebrafish. To date this technology has been primarily used to generate genetic knockout animals. Nevertheless, the study of the function of certain loci might require tight spatiotemporal control of gene inactivation. Here, we show that tissue-specific gene disruption can be achieved by driving Cas9 expression with the Gal4/UAS system. Furthermore, by combining the Gal4/UAS and Cre/loxP systems, we establish a versatile tool to genetically label mutant cell clones, enabling their phenotypic analysis. Our technique has the potential to be applied to diverse model organisms, enabling tissue-specific loss-of-function and phenotypic characterization of live and fixed tissues.

Satellite applications as an ocean and coastal zone management tool: three cases studies

La presente investigación es un estudio de tres aplicaciones de los satélites del océano y las zonas costeras (OCzM). Los sensores de radar que se utilizan en la exploración batimétrica son útiles en la industria de las tuberías de petróleo y en la navegación costera. Térmica y la imagen de radar se han utilizado para detectar indirectamente la distribución de los recursos de las pesquerías de atún y últimamente también otras pesquerías. El sistema de posicionamiento global (GPS) y de comunicaciones de datos de seguimiento de la flota actual de permisos, aunque el enfoque de esta tesis es sobre la flota pesquera. El desarrollo de cualquier sistema de monitoreo de la flota puede seguir el mismo principio.

The soil core microcosm : a potential screening tool /

Mode of access: Internet.

Combustion, an oil spill mitigation tool /

"UC-11."