Hidden in plain sight:low-literacy adults in a developed country overcoming social and educational challenges through mobile learning support tools

Illiteracy is often associated with people in developing countries. However, an estimated 50 % of adults in a developed country such as Canada lack the literacy skills required to cope with the challenges of today's society; for them, tasks such as reading, understanding, basic arithmetic, and using everyday items are a challenge. Many community-based organizations offer resources and support for these adults, yet overall functional literacy rates are not improving. This is due to a wide range of factors, such as poor retention of adult learners in literacy programs, obstacles in transferring the acquired skills from the classroom to the real life, personal attitudes toward learning, and the stigma of functional illiteracy. In our research we examined the opportunities afforded by personal mobile devices in providing learning and functional support to low-literacy adults. We present the findings of an exploratory study aimed at investigating the reception and adoption of a technological solution for adult learners. ALEX© is a mobile application designed for use both in the classroom and in daily life in order to help low-literacy adults become increasingly literate and independent. Such a solution complements literacy programs by increasing users' motivation and interest in learning, and raising their confidence levels both in their education pursuits and in facing the challenges of their daily lives. We also reflect on the challenges we faced in designing and conducting our research with two user groups (adults enrolled in literacy classes and in an essential skills program) and contrast the educational impact and attitudes toward such technology between these. Our conclusions present the lessons learned from our evaluations and the impact of the studies' specific challenges on the outcome and uptake of such mobile assistive technologies in providing practical support to low-literacy adults in conjunction with literacy and essential skills training. © 2013 Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada.

“Showing off” your mobile device:adult literacy learning in the classroom and beyond

For a very large number of adults, tasks such as reading. understanding, and using everyday items are a challenge. Although many community-based organizations offer resources and support for adults with limited literacy skills. current programs have difficulty reaching and retaining those that would benefit most. In this paper we present the findings of an exploratory study aimed at investigating how a technological solution that addresses these challenges is received and adopted by adult learners. For this, we have developed a mobile application to support literacy programs and to assist low-literacy adults in today's information-centric society. ALEX© (Adult Literacy support application for Experiential learning) is a mobile language assistant that is designed to be used both in the classroom and in daily life in order to help low-literacy adults become increasingly literate and independent. Through a long-term study with adult learners we show that such a solution complements literacy programs by increasing users' motivation and interest in learning, and raising their confidence levels both in their education pursuits and in facing the challenges of their daily lives.

Image Sensors in Security and Medical Applications

This paper briefly reviews CMOS image sensor technology and its utilization in security and medical applications. The role and future trends of image sensors in each of the applications are discussed. To provide the reader deeper understanding of the technology aspects the paper concentrates on the selected applications such as surveillance, biometrics, capsule endoscopy and artificial retina. The reasons for concentrating on these applications are due to their importance in our daily life and because they present leading-edge applications for imaging systems research and development. In addition, review of image sensors implementation in these applications allows the reader to investigate image sensor technology from the technical and from other views as well.

Modulation of cholesterol in midlife affords cognitive advantage during ageing - a role for altered redox balance

General practitioners, geriatricians, neurologists and health care professionals all over the world will be facing by 2040 the diagnostic, therapeutic and socioeconomic challenges of over 80 million people with dementia. Dementia is one of the most common diseases in the elderly which drastically affects daily life and everyday personal activities, is often associated with behavioural symptoms, personality change and numerous clinical complications and increases the risk for urinary incontinence, hip fracture, and - most markedly - the dependence on nursing care. The costs of care for patients with dementia are therefore immense. Serum cholesterol levels above 6.5 mmol/L are known to be associated with an increased RR of 1.5 and 2.1 to develop Alzheimeŕs disease, the most common form of dementia, and a reduction of serum cholesterol in midlife is associated with a lowered dementia risk. The aim of this work is to critically discuss some of the main results reported recently in the literature in this respect and to provide the pathophysiological rationale for the control of dyslipidemia in the prevention of dementia onset and progression.

Breaking promises. The Hungarian experience

My main aim is to present the phenomena related to fulfilment and breach of promises and the economic, political and ethical problems arising from these. I discuss questions that we all meet with in daily life and see mentioned in the press, other forums of public discourse, gatherings of friends, or sessions of Parliament. There are some who complain that a building contractor has not done a renovation job properly according to contract. Economists argue over the outcome of late repayments on loans advanced for purchasing real estate. Opposition meetings chide the governing party over unfulfilled campaign promises. I am seeking what is common among these seemingly different cases. Can we see identical or similar behavior patterns and social mechanisms in them? Do they lead to similar decision-making dilemmas and reactions?

The effect of a reform on a school organizational culture after receiving a failing Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test rating

The purpose of this research was to explore the effects of a reform that took place in an elementary school during 2000/2001 as a result of a failure rating on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test on the structure and the personnel of the organization. ^ The exploration took place over a period of 10 months starting in August 2000 until June 2001. It focused on the effect of the failure rating on the: (a) structure and operation of the school; (b) morale, beliefs, behaviors, and daily lives of teachers and the principal; and (c) the effect of the reform effort on the leadership style of the principal, whether she became a transactional or a transformative leader. ^ The researcher assumed the role of a participant observer. Data sources were her personal recollections of major events that took place during the year of the reform, interviews, observations, and school documents. The sample included 15 teachers present during the time of the reform. Ten taught second through fifth grade. The remaining five participants were the music teacher, the counselor, and the writing, reading and technology specialists. Together they represented the instructional team or represented special education areas. ^ The findings indicated that the reform effort had an effect on the structure and the operation of the school. The changes included reorganization of the physical set up, changes in curriculum and instruction, changes in the means of communication among the staff, and the addition of new staff members including an official agent of change. The reform had a greater effect on the daily lives of teachers and their morale than on their beliefs and behaviors. Teachers reported that during the effort their daily lives were stressful and their morale very low due to the enormous expectations that they had to meet. On the other hand, the reform effort had a positive effect on the daily life, morale, beliefs, and behaviors of the principal. It energized her. She spoke positively about the change. She functioned as an effective, positive, resilient transactional leader who did what was necessary in order to enable the teachers to cope with the complex situation. ^

Latinoamericanismo y modernidad en la obra ensayistica de Arturo Uslar Pietri

This dissertation follows the political and literary ideas of the late Venezuelan writer Arturo Úslar Pietri. Analysis of his essayistic production focuses on his reflections on three major topics: universality, Latin Americanism, and Venezuelan national identity. By "universality" I refer to Úslar's reflections on general human culture and the way in which the crises of many ethical, philosophical, and scientific postulates of modernity are felt and expressed by this author through his critical appraisal of 20th-century history and culture. His most extensive and controversial reflections are those on Latin American identity, historical, socio-cultural and political processes, and philosophical thought, configuring what might be called a Latin American "rationality." National reflections follow the author's ideas on three topics: oil and its (mostly negative) impact on all aspects of Venezuelan life, the rescue of national history as a means to construct a Venezuelan identity, and the quest to identify/configure a national "subject" akin to the new rationality. My conclusion examines the essay-novel relationship as a compendium of Úslar's ideas and public political practices, as illustrated in his novels, where changing global realities are reflected in the most concrete aspects of Venezuelan daily life.^

Analysis of Students’ Misconceptions and Error Patterns in Mathematics: The Case of Fractions

This study analyzed three fifth grade students’ misconceptions and error patterns when working with equivalence, addition and subtraction of fractions. The findings revealed that students used both conceptual and procedural knowledge to solve the problems. They used pictures, gave examples, and made connections to other mathematical concepts and to daily life topics. Error patterns found include using addition and subtraction of numerators and denominators, and finding the greatest common factor.

Text analytics of social media: Sentiment analysis, event detection and summarization

In the last decade, large numbers of social media services have emerged and been widely used in people's daily life as important information sharing and acquisition tools. With a substantial amount of user-contributed text data on social media, it becomes a necessity to develop methods and tools for text analysis for this emerging data, in order to better utilize it to deliver meaningful information to users. ^ Previous work on text analytics in last several decades is mainly focused on traditional types of text like emails, news and academic literatures, and several critical issues to text data on social media have not been well explored: 1) how to detect sentiment from text on social media; 2) how to make use of social media's real-time nature; 3) how to address information overload for flexible information needs. ^ In this dissertation, we focus on these three problems. First, to detect sentiment of text on social media, we propose a non-negative matrix tri-factorization (tri-NMF) based dual active supervision method to minimize human labeling efforts for the new type of data. Second, to make use of social media's real-time nature, we propose approaches to detect events from text streams on social media. Third, to address information overload for flexible information needs, we propose two summarization framework, dominating set based summarization framework and learning-to-rank based summarization framework. The dominating set based summarization framework can be applied for different types of summarization problems, while the learning-to-rank based summarization framework helps utilize the existing training data to guild the new summarization tasks. In addition, we integrate these techneques in an application study of event summarization for sports games as an example of how to better utilize social media data. ^

The effect of a reform on a school organizational culture after receiving a failing Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test rating

The purpose of this research was to explore the effects of a reform that took place in an elementary school during 2000/2001 as a result of a failure rating on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test on the structure and the personnel of the organization. The exploration took place over a period of 10 months starting in August 2000 until June 2001. It focused on the effect of the failure rating on the: (a) structure and operation of the school; (b) morale, beliefs, behaviors, and daily lives of teachers and the principal; and (c) the effect of the reform effort on the leadership style of the principal, whether she became a transactional or a transformative leader. The researcher assumed the role of a participant observer. Data sources were her personal recollections of major events that took place during the year of the reform, interviews, observations, and school documents. The sample included 15 teachers present during the time of the reform. Ten taught second through fifth grade. The remaining five participants were the music teacher, the counselor, and the writing, reading and technology specialists. Together they represented the instructional team or represented special education areas. The findings indicated that the reform effort had an effect on the structure and the operation of the school. The changes included reorganization of the physical set up, changes in curriculum and instruction, changes in the means of communication among the staff, and the addition of new staff members including an official agent of change. The reform had a greater effect on the daily lives of teachers and their morale than on their beliefs and behaviors. Teachers reported that during the effort their daily lives were stressful and their morale very low due to the enormous expectations that they had to meet. On the other hand, the reform effort had a positive effect on the daily life, morale, beliefs, and behaviors of the principal. It energized her. She spoke positively about the change. She functioned as an effective, positive, resilient transactional leader who did what was necessary in order to enable the teachers to cope with the complex situation.

Text Analytics of Social Media: Sentiment Analysis, Event Detection and Summarization

In the last decade, large numbers of social media services have emerged and been widely used in people's daily life as important information sharing and acquisition tools. With a substantial amount of user-contributed text data on social media, it becomes a necessity to develop methods and tools for text analysis for this emerging data, in order to better utilize it to deliver meaningful information to users. Previous work on text analytics in last several decades is mainly focused on traditional types of text like emails, news and academic literatures, and several critical issues to text data on social media have not been well explored: 1) how to detect sentiment from text on social media; 2) how to make use of social media's real-time nature; 3) how to address information overload for flexible information needs. In this dissertation, we focus on these three problems. First, to detect sentiment of text on social media, we propose a non-negative matrix tri-factorization (tri-NMF) based dual active supervision method to minimize human labeling efforts for the new type of data. Second, to make use of social media's real-time nature, we propose approaches to detect events from text streams on social media. Third, to address information overload for flexible information needs, we propose two summarization framework, dominating set based summarization framework and learning-to-rank based summarization framework. The dominating set based summarization framework can be applied for different types of summarization problems, while the learning-to-rank based summarization framework helps utilize the existing training data to guild the new summarization tasks. In addition, we integrate these techneques in an application study of event summarization for sports games as an example of how to better utilize social media data.

Ser cuidador de paciente com acidente vascular cerebral: histórias não contadas

The present study aimed to understand the experience of being a family caregiver of a patient with Cerebrovascular Accident (CVA). The relevance of the study is to prove existence of a large number of caregivers of incapacitated patients, due to the CVA and it is not an academic research object, according to the literature. It is a qualitative research, which the guiding principle is the oral history of life, according to the theoretical foundation and operating of Meihy. Therefore, the following steps were highlighted: the target community, composed of all family caregivers of CVA patients; the colony, composed by family caregivers of CVA patients assisted by Home Care Service (HCS) of the Hospital José Pedro Bezerra (HJPB), in the city of Natal/RN; the network was composed of six caregivers who met the criteria for inclusion, and as zero point the first volunteer group. The population was composed of all family caregivers of patients attended by the HCS, of the HJPB having been addressed through interviews. For the empirical research there was the consent of that institution and approval by the Ethics Committee in Research of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte as CAAE 24569413.0.0000.5537 and, above all, with the acquiescence of employees in participating in the investigation, signing an informed consent. Of the empirical material, five categories of analysis were identified: the sense of being a caregiver; what has changed in the life of the caregiver; the feelings emerge in the relationship of care; the distance from family and friends; difficulties faced by the caregiver. The results show that the caregiver's life goes through profound transformations within the family as well as in all spheres of life. For the caregivers, assuming the care of a relative with CVA means renunciation and donation, compromising sometimes the individual projects and the family as a whole. In addition, they point out the confrontation of difficulties within the the assistance and humanization in healthcare, information, physical and emotional overload, as well as financial problems. Despite all the adversities that compromise the caregiver's life, it was possible to identify attitudes of resilience among caregivers, making them their daily life less strenuous and with more lightness. It is expected, therefore, that this research can contribute to a better orientation of professionals with the caregivers

Cartografia do trabalho de agentes penitenciários: reflexão sobre o “dispositivo prisão”

The Brazilian prison system is going through a serious crisis, not only due to the growth in the number of prisoners and the consequent overcrowding of prisons, but also for the violation of human rights, institutionalization and difficulty in social rehabilitation of inmates. Furthermore, the harmful effects of the prison system affect their workers, who generally are not prioritized by researchers, health programs and government policies. The literature pointing to some consequences of work in prison, among them, the mental illness, stress, alcohol abuse, etc., but little is known about this profession, their problems, the difficulties of their work routine, so as subjective processes involved. So, what are the effects of this work in the prison in the lives of correctional officers? What strategies developed to address the work in prison? This research aims to analyze the effects of this work in the prison in the lives of correctional officers from the state prison in Parnamirim, located in the metropolitan region of Natal-RN. Within the theoretical and methodological perspective of institutional analysis and cartography were carried conversation circles, interviews, in addition to participant observation of the correctional officers work’s routine. The results point to a working routine marked by the performance of procedures that involve risk to the worker, generating situations of tension and stress. Besides, the culture of violence (which is implemented in jail everyday) as well as the training and initial learning of the profession, are responsible for the militarization process of the subjectivities of the correctional officers, producing hard subject, disciplined, stiff, likely to violent practices and other rights violations. Other mapped effects relate to the acquisition of knowledge about the human (“psy” knowledge) responsible for forging the conception of the criminal as "dangerous subject", which, in turn, acts as subjectivity vector in the daily life of prison guards by setting up a way of life crossed by fear and insecurity outside the work environment. Produces a control in the open about their lives and their families, limiting them with regard to family and community life and the realization of leisure activities in public spaces. In this sense, it appears that the arrest acts producing “bad meetings” (from Espinosa's perspective), once it produces sad affections responsible for weakening the conatus, limiting the possibilities of action of these subjects. Although agents develop some strategies to deal with the difficulties of working in prison (among which stand out the development of other professional or leisure activities, spirituality / religiosity and the ability to separate the labor moments from those of their the personal lives, is advocated that such strategies do not offer significant resistance, since they do not question the contemporary legal-criminal logic. The thesis presented supports the proposals of penal abolitionism to present other conceptions of crime and justice through the invention of other practical and conceptual strategies.

O canto dos vestibulandos em 140 caracteres: linguagem e construção de identidades no Twitter

The revolution caused by the internet and its various social networks eventually bring forth fruitful reflections on cyberculture and the power of identity construction. What seemed purely fashion has become way of being, representation of self, reality creation (Lévy, 1996). Considering language as a social phenomenon, which occurs through interaction, as explicit in Bakhtin (1929), the speech aired on social networks shapes the profile of their users, constructing identities which, according to Hall (2006), are multiple and non-permanent . This research seeks to examine the use of Twitter by school students, developing a reflection on the construction of their own identities in cyberspace. The subjects are students of Educandário Nossa Senhora das Vitórias, private school in Assú/RN, all graduates from high school. Understanding the Vestibular year as a decisive and a reflection engine ever present about their condition of students, subjects eventually express their anxieties, fears and perspectives in the virtual environment, providing us with enough material to analyze how they are high school students, expectations for appropriate selection processes, plus several representations belonging to the school environment. From the discourse conveyed on Twitter expressed in Featured posts, this study reveals the identities of high school students that emerge from it, which led the cast of some evidence. From them, despite the multiplicity of identities observed, presented some common aspects that corroborate the requirements provided for specific objectives, such as: feeling of belonging to a group - class and school; change of routine and behavior towards education; desecration of traditional teaching practices; changing the identity of students'writings. The analysis of postings enables us to know the perceptions of students regarding the school, the disciplines , the pace of studies, interest in school practices, and from such evidence, the perception of how vestibular modify your daily life and a fondness their identities as school students.

Habitus e prática docente nas escolas do ensino fundamental I em Parnamirim-RN

The notion of habitus, developed by Pierre Bourdieu, and laying it down with the teaching practice and vice versa comprise the analysis undertaken here. Naturally, concepts such as field, capital and symbolic power, also prepared by him throughout their sociological research, represent important tools in this research work about the components that make up the Faculty practice. Thus, we focus on the actions that characterize this practice and which has the habitus its triggering mechanism, i.e. a device that not only produces the actions, but also changes from them. Based on this perspective, therefore, we are using as methodological feature the collective subject discourse (DSC) and your software (Qualiquantsoft), which aim to understand how certain collective thinking regarding the issues that afflict him. In addition, we undertook during the fieldwork, participant observation techniques as a tool to capture some nuances that permeate the school environment. Our proposal was to observe in what circumstances the objective conditions experienced by teachers in elementary schools I in Parnamirim-RN, tend to conflict with the provisions incorporated by them in their daily life. To put it another way, it means that it is not always the practice can reconcile Professorial what had previously been prescribed and thus widely accepted, with the way to perceive, evaluate and act for each. Although usually pass unnoticed, this disharmony is more common than you think. Proof of this are the looks directed those who fortuitously doubters fail to adapt immediately to regulations imposed by the education system (SE).